Displaed into Nothing
by RockstarRaccoon
Summary: [Rationalfic Subversion of Displaced] You've heard stories of people from Earth being "Displaced": Their bodies are changed, and they're thrown across the multiverse, sometimes without memories, to whatever world and timeline their supernal "Displacers" decide upon. Well, this story isn't one of them... ...because when they tried to remake me, I didn't let them.
1. Prologue: Blank Canvas

Let me tell you about my life... Or... That's not exactly right... Let me try this again.

Let me tell you about a girl named Marilyn Susanna...

Marilyn lived in a strange land, far, far away from our own. A land without creatures like Unicorns and Dragons, where there were no great sorcerers and wizards, no monsters or mystical wonders, where most believed magic simply to not exist. Marilyn was the precocious daughter of a working class family, who loved reading from a young age, especially stories about the magic and adventure which was considered a work of fantasy in her world. Marilyn wanted to believe in magic though, she wanted it to be real so hard, but alas, it seemed the doomed fantasy of a child...

Marilyn was smart though. She could read long before her peers, and excelled in math and the sciences. She graduated high school a whole grade ahead, and was given a full scholarship to a prestigious University. She minored in Mathematics and majored in something which is called "[i]kahm'pewtuhr proweghrahmn'mingh[/i]", which does not yet have a name in your language.

It was here that she became involved in the occult.

The Society was supposed to be secret, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell you, seeing as you're unlikely to come across it. They called themselves the Midnight Society, and would hold late night meetings in libraries, coffee shops, and apartments. The Midnighters discussed cutting edge science, speculative history, philosophy, metaphysics, religion, the paranormal, cryptozoology, conspiracy theories, and magic, topics which Marilyn wasn't sure she really believed in, until one day, the group managed to summon a terrifying entity! The rough translation of the entity's name in her language would be "Deep One". It was a literally nightmarish creature of the deepest depths of the collective unconscious, and it did not have any interest in cooperation with the creatures who had opened the doorway. Far from it... This being of incredible power hated them for every crime humanity had ever committed.

One of Marilyn's fellow Midnighters died at the creature's terrible claws before the others could push it back beneath the veil of nightmares. Shaken by the reality of what had come to pass, most of her group abandoned the study of the paranormal altogether...

...But Marilyn became [i]obsessed[/i]. The supernatural was [i]real[/i]. It had happened [i]right in front of her[/i]. And now, she [i]knew[/i] that its power could be [i]harnessed[/i]...

Marilyn managed to complete her bachelors degree in only four years, impressing her professors with her sharp, analytical mind. By night, however, she had moonlighted as a sorceress, influencing people through their dreams, incepting ideas within their minds which would later play out in reality. Marilyn quickly gained favors she had never earned, was given jobs she would never have been considered for, had access to secrets whose owners had never told a soul... Marilyn had power. Power that began to terrify even her... People wouldn't just do her harmless favors, she realized... She had the power to cause men and women to leave their spouses for her, to empty their bank accounts and become destitute for her... to kill for her. Worse, she knew there were entities out there who had gotten wind of what she was doing.

Marilyn had amassed quite a savings account at this point, most of it gained by rigging the odds. She decided it was time to get out while she still could: she quit her job and left the city and moved to the outer suburbs, nearly swearing off her Sorcery altogether, only using it from that point forward for spiritual enlightenment and her own protection. Secluded, she was safe to live out her life in peace, away from the temptations of human society.

The few friends she'd made in college noticed that she came around less and less, and tried to get her to come back out of her shell, unaware of the exploits which she'd been drawn into. One day, they invited her to a comic book convention. She had plenty of money, and it would be fun they said... Lonely from her self-imposed isolation, she agreed: what would it hurt to relax for a few days?

Soon, Marilyn found herself enjoying one of the biggest comic book conventions in her country, dressed in a costume she'd thrown together of one of her favourite cartoon characters from her childhood, looking bright-eyed at all the childish pleasures there. On the last day of the convention, she wandered into a very peculiar stall... The goods here were of remarkable quality, some looking almost as if they were the real thing. It was here that she saw the most adorable plush toy, and decided that she should buy it. She exchanged pleasantries with the vendor, a tall, handsome, middle aged man with an odd glint in his eye, but something was off about him... As if there was something... hollow...

...Magic?

No. That was impossible. She laughed it off as she walked out of the stall: of course there was no magic here. That would be silly, right? She didn't even see the hole that had been torn in reality before she was already careening through. The spellwork had bared down on her before she had any time to throw up a ward. In a last fit of desperation, she clawed out with her mind, working to unravel the spell before it literally tore her body apart...

[center]And that, at the far-too-young age of twenty seven, is where her story comes to an unfortunate end...[/center]

[center][i]...And where MY story begins.[/i][/center]


	2. Chapter 1: White Noise

My memories of the circumstances under which I came to be what I am are a bit shaky, considering what was happening at the time and what happened shortly after, but I have some vague recollection of living through it, and I can piece the rest together from what I found out later. I'll try to piece it together for you...  
[hr]  
I was in a massive empty space, surrounded by almost total darkness, the only visual to judge distance by were the flickering colors and lights far far away. I'd glimpsed this part of the cosmos before, but only at the farthest reaches which I dared to explore: I'd never figured out a way to actually traverse the distance to here, and I'd worried about the dangers I knew must lurk here in the inter-dimensional space I now know as the Void. I didn't have time to think about that though: from the moment the spell hit me, I could feel my form being torn away as if it was merely a shroud for my mind and soul. I tried desperately to hold it together, lest I be lost in the Void as a consciousness without a body, but the spell was too powerful: my physical form was broken down into raw potential before I could even mount a proper counter. Whatever cast this spell had put an immense amount of power into it: it was like I was struggling against the will of a distant leviathan...

I had barely recovered my bearings by the time the next part of the spell began to trigger. The first part had removed my physical form, but was somehow keeping me together as the next part started to weave a new form around me. Not one to be part of someone else's magical experiment, I quickly pulled at the fabric of that spell...

I quickly found that, while whoever this caster was had access to far greater will and energy than me, their spellwork was far less sophisticated than one would expect. It was as if they'd used a brute force approach to removing my body and constructing a new one around my being. I managed to pull it apart at the seams, instead using my own spell to break it down and absorb it, quickly hijacking whatever spell was keeping me together and trying to weave some sort of ward to defend myself from whatever was going on...

...it was the moment that I'd absorbed the spell though, that all hell broke loose.

Before I could finish raising my wards, another set of spellforms rushed in on me: I'd triggered some sort of failsafe. It was quickly made clear to me that whoever the caster was hadn't intended to let me exist if they couldn't turn me into something else. The trap spells grabbed at all parts of my being, pulling at my mind and memories, trying to unmake what little was left of who I'd been. Once again, my efforts to resist directly were useless: it was like fighting against some unstoppable force of will, bearing down upon my insignificant mind, a mind which I was losing fast. Desperate to not be turned into nothing, I tore at the spellwork, frantically tearing apart those spellforms and absorbing their energy. Every second, whole swaths of the person Marilyn had been were ripped away. My memories, consciousness, and personality were shredded, thrown asunder, and whatever I didn't manage to hold onto was lost to the Void, like objects in space. By the time I'd pulled apart the spellwork, the damage was done: I had no idea who I was or what was happening to me. All I knew was that I needed to keep what was left together, and keep myself from being subsumed into the astral. Every moment I spent in that void, entropy wreaked havoc on me: I was literally falling to pieces...

Clawing out in desperation, I found one last spellform which hadn't triggered. All I could tell was that it was some sort of travel spell, meant to send me somewhere far across the cosmos. I had no idea where the caster had intended to send me, but at this point, I didn't have enough mind left to guess. All I knew was that anywhere was better than here...

With no other options left, I tapped into the spellform and was sent hurdling across the multiverse. Turbulent forces wrenched me about as I struggled to maintain my sense of self, experiencing a form of ego death as my raw essence was directly exposed to the collective unconscious of a billion worlds. I don't know how long I was falling for: time is an entirely relative construct, and I had no frame of reference, nor was I even a temporal being at this point. It could have been seconds just as easily as an eternity. I was running purely on will and purpose at this point: I would have felt fear, but the emotion was no longer functioning, so close I was to being subsumed into the cosmos entirely by the time I hit the destination and was quickly pulled into the aura of some unknown World...

I felt a vast force surround me as I entered the powerful magical field this world was surrounded by, and just as soon as I'd left the power vacuum of the void, I found myself tumbling about in some sort of vortex around a massive power source. Quickly losing coherency, I focused on keeping myself intact. I managed to connect the cluttered remnants of the girl who had been Marilyn haphazardly, unable to rebuild memories and concepts properly in the maelstrom. My will had been exhausted at this point, and I found my consciousness dwindling. Unable to act, unable to find shelter, the purpose that had driven me began to die...

Forms blended into nothing... Existence became meaningless...


	3. Chapter 2: Shadows on the Wall

"Alright. Let's begin!"

"Ready when you are!"

"July 24th, 4 LR. While performing routine observation of the Harmonic Aether as part of the ongoing study, (see Harmonic Aether Survey, 4 LR) I have discovered what appears to be a large spellform held within the 5th layer of the spiral current. This finding is significant, because usually spellforms are broken apart soon after entering the flow. This spellform, however, seems to be built to preserve itself in hostile conditions, possibly the Void which lies outside of the Aether on the astral plane. What's more, this spellform, while far too complex to analyze, is clearly of purposeful construction by a talented mage, but looks like nothing of known Equestrial origin. After preliminary study, I am tempted to speculate that this may be..." She hesitated to say it, "...of extraEquestrial origin."

He stopped, "Wait... You mean like... Aliens?"

The mare hesitated, then nodded slowly, "Yeah, I looked through the records of this method of spellcraft, and I didn't find anything like it: no one's ever developed the use of Concept-Thoughtforms in this way, especially considering it's uses in spellcasting are mostly supplemental to different spells, and this is far too complex to be an experiment... That doesn't exactly rule out something from our planet, but it definitely rules out any culture we have contact with."

"...wait... What if this is some sort of Invasion? Like in that movie! They didn't send their spaceships, they sent a spell to terraform the planet!"

She rolled her eyes, "Calm down Spike, it looks more like a time capsule filled with information than anything else, and even if it was, I just put it in a Thaumatic Isolation Chamber, it's not going to be able to do anything because it won't be able to act upon anything outside."

"Are you sure? What if it's a mind-control spell? What if there's more of them? We should tell the Princess!"

"Ok, first off, this thing didn't exactly blend in with the background radiation. I'm sure if there were more I'd have noticed. Second, I [i]am[/i] a princess, and I'm going to have you send them a copy of this when we're done. Third, we've seen extraEquestrial beings before. Remember the human world? There's no reason so far to believe the creators of this spell were hostile, or that it's even a spell with destructive capabilities. Now, any other emergencies, or can we get back to documenting these findings?"

Spike sighed, "No... Ready when you are..."

She nodded with a little smile. "Alright, where was I?"

"ExtraEquestrial origin."

"Right. To prevent potential degrading of the spellform, and to isolate it for study, I have placed it in a Thaumatic Isolation Chamber. I will proceed to run routine analyses on the spellform before directly experimenting with it. As the only known spellform of its kind, however, I will avoid anything which might damage it at this time. Attached are the results of my observations.

Signed, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Doctor of Magical Sciences."

Spike finished copying down the notes. "... Magical Sciences. Got it. What's next?"

"Well..." Twilight looked around her lab, thinking, "I have the machines set up... I suppose you could go back upstairs for a while while I run some tests..."

"You sure? I could stick around and write things down if you need me..."

She shook her head, "No, it's fine, just don't leave the castle in case I need an extra set of hooves."

Spike nodded, heading for the stairs, "Right... I'll get back to cleaning..."

Twilight smiled a little, adding as he rounded the corner, "I love you Spike!"

"Love you too Twilight!"

Twilight beamed for a moment before turning back to her work...

Twilight opened her magical vectors, reaching out towards the corners of the room, wrapping her aura around several machines which had swiveling wheels attached to their bases. She solidified her magical grip and pulled the objects into the center of the room, arranging them around the isolation chamber and starting them up, one by one. Her thaumatic spectrometer was first: she hadn't been able to get this thing's frequency in the wild, but now she could find out for sure what kind of energy it was made from. She started that machine, and moved onto several others, like her lattice distribution analyzer and her aural lithograph machine, before standing, herself, in between two of the machines and observing the spellform directly, pencil and notepad held beside her. She began the process of carefully sketching and analyzing the various patterns in the spellform... She wasn't sure she could get all of it down though... There were so many complex details here that it might take her a whole week to actually understand it, and on top of that it was moving: a whole section of it was just a stack of rotating circles, not far apart from each other. She counted about 500 in that stack, but it was only a guess: they were like a stack of papers that had suddenly decided to start spinning. She did notice that parts of the spell seemed entirely structural, there for the sole purpose of keeping the numerous sections which looked like they were just piles of information secured to the main mass. She'd found a few pieces which had broken off, and had kept them in separate containers, but they weren't something she could interpret without any other information... She wondered if this was maybe the caster's way of giving the spellform information to draw on, but it was an inefficient way of doing it: why not just link them in directly and have them be called when needed?

The last machine made a beeping noise, and the sounds of the last papers finished tumbling. Twilight put the final touches on her notepad and set it aside: there was no way she could analyze this thing in one day, but she could probably find time in the next few days to make more detailed sketches of it... She picked up the spectrometer's output papers... "Hmm..." she mumbled to herself, "That's... That's definitely not equestrian... Let's see..." she moved over to her bookshelf and pulled the reference book, flipping through for anything that even resembled that, but after glancing over every section it became clear that the only reading she could recognize on this was background radiation from the Abyss... "'nother point for aliens..." she muttered, setting that down and grabbing the next paper. The more she looked at it, the more questions came up: it wasn't just the method of spellcraft that was unusual, it was the very nature of the magic which had made it. It's lattice work was in about 50 different patterns, as if the work of at least that many mages, looked nothing like a unicorn's, or anything else she'd seen for that matter, and was more haphazard than anything she'd make, but not haphazard enough to be a chaos mage. She didn't recognize any of the symbology or the numerology involved either, and wasn't even sure what the basis for most of it was... She was starting to wonder if parts of it were obfuscated or randomly generated, or if it had been mutated by the cosmic forces.

TL;DR, it was weird, she didn't understand it.

Twilight sighed, arranging the notes in a box on the desk. She'd gathered every bit of data she could in one hour. All of it was inconclusive. She stared at the shimmering mass floating in the chamber. She wasn't sure whether to be excited or annoyed: here she was on the precipice of what was probably one of the most important discoveries in the history of her planet, and she couldn't even figure out what its purpose was...

"Hey Twilight!" a scratchy voice interrupted her brooding, "You done down there?" Right, the investigation... She'd already informed the royal guard of the activities of Starlight Glimmer, and had a bulletin put out for her, but the new EBI wanted to talk with all of them together just to make sure there weren't any details missing and to figure out how to proceed...

She was pretty much done for the day anyway. She gave the spellform one last glance, and turned to walk back up the stairs, reaching out to flick the switch for the electric lights she'd had installed overhead... She'd figure this one out... in time...

[hr]

"Alright... Day three... Ready?"

"Uh... Twilight? ...Did it look like that last night?"

Twilight glanced at the chamber which Spike was pointing at with a hesitant claw. "...No... It... changed overnight... Spike! Help me get some readings!"

What had once been a shimmering white mess of spellform had congealed, becoming a grey blob of shimmering energy, sparks floating between sections like tiny static discharges in a cloud. Parts of it reached out from the main cloud, like tendrils, and slid gently against the crystal glass lining the container. Other than that though, the blob just bobbed lazily in the air, as if suspended on the surface of a liquid...

Twilight scrambled about as the set all the equipment to record, finally just putting her face against the glass, horn alight as she frantically scribbled notes to describe the new structure, drawing diagrams of it and noting the many changes. It had broken apart the structures connecting the data clusters and rearranged them for fast, organized access... Her eyes widened. It had done more than that, it had created the new superstructures for sensory and substructures for more storage and processing... Her jaw shook as she struggled to vocalize. "...it... it's self-optimizing..." she breathed, "I... I've never seen that before..." The machines began to stop, and she tossed the notepad haphazardly on a nearby desk, yanking the paper off the thaumatic spectrometer and pouring over the data, breathing intensifying as more numbers came in... "Celestia...This is incredible..." Twilight breathed, eyes tearing slightly as the gravity of the situation began to dawn on her.

"What... What's going on?" Spike was

"I mean... We knew that it was possible to make an adaptive spellform... In theory, a conceptual spellform could be built to self-modify, but... This isn't just self modifying... This is completely reconstructing itself into a new spellform, suited for the new environment inside the isolation chamber... Like..." she stopped, breathing almost cutting out as her eyes widened, "Like a living organism... Spike... Do you know what this means?"

"Uh... That it's turning into an alien?" Spike said, increasingly anxious.

"No Spike! It means we've just found something which could prove and disprove a whole book worth of models on the nature of magic! This could be one of the greatest finds in the history of magical theory!"

"I dunno Twilight... You just said it's 'self modifying'... What about that story you showed me where the self-modifying construct went rogue and destroyed its creators? How do you know this isn't like that?"

"I don't!" Twilight grinned, "That's what makes this so exciting! We're literally looking at something that's more advanced than anything ever developed in recorded history!"

"Twilight! Think about what you're saying! This thing could be really dangerous!"

"Sometimes science involves studying things you don't understand, even when they're dangerous... Especially if they're dangerous! I thought I'd taught you that much..."

"Twilight, this could be a Grey Goo scenario. You can't let it out of that chamber."

Twilight rolled her eyes, "Oh come on Spike. I'm eventually gonna have to interact with it directly if I want to know what it is..."

"No!" Spike put his foot down, pointing a finger at her, "You just told me this thing is dangerous, like [i]really dangerous[/i]. We need to tell the other Princesses what's going on, and develop some sort of, I dunno... quarantine policy with this thing... Nopony should be screwing around with it unless they have somepony else watching them!"

Twilight opened her mouth to protest, but stopped herself. Her head sagged, and she sighed, "You're right... I taught you well... Probably too well..." she grumbled. "Fine. We'll tell the princesses and I won't open the chamber unless somepony else is there to watch... ok?"

Spike nodded, relaxing his shoulders, "I'm just looking out for you Twi... You know that."

Twilight looked away, a half smile forming, "Yeah... Sometimes I let my emotions run away with me... It's good to know I have a good friend to help pull me back."

Spike smiled, "Any time Twilight, any time..." He grabbed the paper off the last machine to record its readings, "So... What exactly changed that's so impressive? Looks like it just got darker to me..."

Twilight took the paper and arranged it in front of her with all of the other output papers she'd collected. "It did more than that Spike... These are the readings from yesterday, and these are the readings from today... The spellform has maintained the same spacial dimensions and only had a small decrease in usable energy, but the threadcount has almost tripled overnight. It's like it's building new pieces into itself with the energy it had when I found it. Not only that, but look at the spectrometer readings: yesterday, it had frequencies which were entirely alien, but today, it's started to actively harmonize with the Aether of our own planet... I think it's pulling in energy from its surroundings to build a superstructure that can maintain stability on our world AND trying to optimize and improve its own functions as it does so. That's the kind of thing only the most experienced casters even attempt, and by that, I mean even Celestia would have to really concentrate to do it well... And this isn't a caster, it's an actual spellform weaving itself! Whoever created this has mastered the art of spellcraft so thoroughly that they can literally make spells which do their own advanced spellcraft!"

Spike blanched a little, "Woah... You don't think this was... just one person who made this, do you?"

"If it was, it had to have taken them weeks of work: this thing is so complicated, it would've taken me that long just to figure out all of its capabilities... And that was before it started self-modifying. At this point, I'd say with enough time, it could have virtually limitless capabilities."

Spike shivered, "Right... Just another reason to be cautious..." he turned to step towards the chamber, looking up at the little lights flitting about within the cloud... They ran from the tendrils, which seemed to almost "lick" the glass as their ends seemed to feel at it, down into the central cloud, where they were lost in the scattered mass of tiny sparks flitting about within. "So... What do you think those... things... coming out of it are? They look like they're sending the lights into the cloudy part..."

"...I... I think it's recording information about its surroundings... I can literally[i] see[/i] the patterns traveling from these mechanisms to this information processing center... Like a thought traveling along a neuron..."

"Wait... So it's... watching us?" Spike took a few, slow steps back...

"'Watching' is a bit too loaded as a word... I'd say it's more like it's sensing what's going on... It's obviously sensing the sides of the container, it probably has some information about the space outside the container, and it might even recognize that we're standing here talking, but there's no way it could interpret that we're having a conversation about it, let alone parse what we're saying. Think about it: if it's not even from the same planet, how could it know Equestrian?"

"Right... right... but... you don't think it's like... 'aware', do you?"

"Spike, it's a spellform. Attributing equine behavior to it is tempting, but that would be the Pathetic Fallacy. I doubt it even really thinks, at least not in the way you or I do..."

"But... What if it did?"

"Well..." Twilight looked idly at the chamber as she humored the notion in her mind, "That would be an explanation for it's ability to adapt and improve itself so well... But it would completely rewrite our understanding of this kind of magic. Things like Rogue Nightmares can be vaguely self aware, but they're that way because someone actively imagined them to be that way for a long time, and they aren't capable of doing this kind of spellwork, even the ones that escape the dream world. Besides, this seems more like passive information gathering to me, like an amoeba feeling about the space it lives in."

Spike nodded slowly, "Alright... Well... I'm gonna head back upstairs... Just don't let it out while I'm gone, ok?"

Twilight nodded, turning back to the spellform... Well... If it was changing... maybe she could at least document the changes... She went for the time-lapse-camera, the spectrographic film, and the thaumic shield. She wasn't able to see the macro changes at this point: it was happening too slow, but she might be able to see the changes if she watched several hours of footage at one frame per minute... She set everything up, aligned the camera, and set it to watching...

She looked over the setup one last time... everything seemed promising... Part of her still couldn't believe what was happening... The more she learned, the more questions she had... She longed to meet whoever had created this thing... She could learn so much...

But now, she felt like she was in the dark... a primitive pony whose world consisted entirety of a cave she'd been trapped in, huddled around her fire, staring at the shadows on the wall, wondering what they meant and desperate for some outsider to come along and take her into the true light...

Spike's voice interrupted her brooding from the top of the stairs, "Hey Twilight! Letter from Canterlot... Looks like Luna attached some notes to this one!"

Twilight grinned. Luna's dream magic functioned mostly off of conceptual thoughtforms, making her one of the leading experts in the subject, even after a thousand years of discoveries. Maybe some questions would be answered sooner rather than later...

[hr]

"Woah... That's... creepy..."

"Yeah... Reminds me of the Tantabus..."

Spike chewed his claws a little, "You don't think that's what it is, do you?"

Twilight shook her head, the shock wearing off, "No... The spellform is completely different from the Tantabus... I think it's... Mimicking... me..."

When Twilight and Spike had come down to check on the entity for the day, it had changed again, this time, far more drastically. Standing before them now was an alicorn shaped cloud of shimmering magic, too thick to see into, complete with a pair of dimly glowing eyes. It had no other differentiation for things like its mane, tail, wings, or hooves, but the shape was uncanny, and it had started to develop a membrane of... What might be actual, physical matter... Twilight wasn't sure yet, but it covered the entirety of the "spellform ", if it could even be called that at this point...

"It's just standing there... All rigid and stuff..."

"Remember Spike, it's not advanced enough to really understand equine behavior... It's probably just trying to build a form it can remain stable in, and used mine because, well, I'm here."

"Right... If you say so... Still creepy..."

"Well... Let's document the new changes..." Twilight walked over to the side of the room where she'd left her notepad...

"Yeah... Document the creepy ghost po-[b]HOLY SHIT![/b]"

Twilight jerked around to see Spike scrambling away from the chamber on his back, one claw pointing at it shakily... The entity had turned its head and was now staring at him... Twilight mouthed for a second, then started to talk, "Calm down Spike... It can't get out of that container... And it's just..." she wasn't really sure what to describe this as...

The creature's head jerked. It was staring at her now.

Twilight's wings shot up a little, hoof raising as she leaned back, "Ok Spike. I agree. It's creepy." She looked it up and down, measuring her breaths as she reminded herself that, one, there was no evidence that it was a hostile entity, two, it was inside a chamber which prevented it from getting out, and three, she'd be able to quickly destroy it if it tried to do anything. "Spike... Come over and stand with me... I don't see any reason to believe it's dangerous..."

"Do you see any reason to believe it's NOT dangerous!"

"No priors. It's literally done nothing but sit there recording information and self modifying..."

"Ok, then what's it doing?"

The entity's body shuddered a bit, its hooves jerking about to turn to face her, moving in a rigid, disturbingly unequine manner...

"It's..." Twilight gulped, hesitant to even say it... "I think it's... Watching us."

"'Watching'? Who's committing the Pathetic Fallacy now?"

"I think it trying to be a pony is enough evidence that I can no longer rule out an actual intelligence."

The entity's neck jerked, it was now looking at Spike.

"...So... Now you're saying it's alive?"

"Well... Think about it. The structures seemed haphazard earlier... But they would appear that way if they were generated organically... The rate and direction at which it's self-modifying implies more than just random iteration, but is too complicated to be mathematical... And now it's trying to turn into something it's been observing, out of all the different things it saw, it goes for the living organism that's been observing it... Yeah, it looks like it might be..." she stopped. Her eyes widened a little...

"A what? Twilight, what the hell is this thing?" Spike had moved back against the wall now, eyes not leaving the chamber.

The entity jerked again, it was now looking at Twilight. It jerked again, and its head was tilted to the side.

"...I don't think it's a spell anymore... think we may have discovered a magic-based life form..."

"Right. Not some crazy alien spell, it's a real life fucking alien."

"Spike. Language."

"Language? Twilight, there's a fucking ALIEN trying to TURN INTO you, and you're worried about the words coming out of my mouth? TWILIGHT, WE ARE IN A REAL-LIFE HORROR STORY! You need to get your priorities straight!"

The entity jerked again, it was looking at Spike, head slightly raised.

"Spike! We can't panic here! This is an amazing discovery, and we can't jump to conclusions!" She took a step towards him, wings flaring a little.

"Who's jumping!? Twilight, it's an alien spellform, it can self modify, it can absorb and create matter, and now you're telling me it's actually an alien consciousness. Twilight, that is the very definition of dangerous!" He narrowed his eyes at her, "Why aren't you afraid?"

"I am afraid! I'm just accepting that sometimes discovery is scary! This could be one of the most important moments in the history of pony-kind, and you won't stop yelling about your emotional reactions!" she stomped over to him...

"Because you're not taking them seriously! Twilight, you can't just keep carrying on like this isn't a threat! It's literally [i]trying to become you![/i]" he leaned in towards her, face inches from hers...

"Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean we should be afraid! It's in a powerful containment, and so far it hasn't even tried to-"

THUNK.

Twilight and Spike went dead silent. They hadn't been looking at the chamber. That noise had come from the chamber. Slowly, they turned their heads, looking over at it as if it could break out and attack them at any moment... The creature's head was pressed up against the side of the chamber...

"Twilight" Spike whispered, "What did it just do..."

"I think it's..." she swallowed, "I think it's... testing the barrier."

Spike just stared at it, eyes wide.

They both stared in silence for a moment.

Finally, Spike opened his mouth to whisper again... "You're sure it can't get out...?"

Twilight shook her head gently, not willing to look away from the chamber. "Not in its current form... It would have to give itself a more solid form than that... Based on current rate of change... I'd say that would take at least a day..."

Spike just stared, slack jawed for a moment.

...

"Fuck it. I'm out." Spike dropped the notepad and quill on the floor and started towards the stairs.

"Spike! Wait! I'll put stronger wards around it! It hasn't even come close to getting out of this one!"

"Twilight, I can't take this anymore, this is insane. You can't just keep this thing in here and watch it alone! At what point are you going to realize that you're putting your life in danger!"

"My life? Spike, this is science! Science IS my life!"

"No Twilight, you're MY life!"

Twilight stopped, blinking at him.

Spike grabbed her, pulling her into a hug, "I don't want to lose you... But you keep getting so close to this thing and it's terrifying... I keep thinking this is like some movie where it's going to eat you or kill you or take over your mind, and I just... I can't watch this anymore..."

Twilight slowly put her forelegs around him, hugging him back, "I... I'm sorry... I didn't think about how this felt for you... You don't have to come down here if you don't want to..."

"Just... Just promise me one thing Twilight... Promise me you will never, EVER let that thing out..."

Twilight looked over at the entity, it was now pressed against the side of the chamber, mouth jerking open and shut as tendrils reached out to... it looked like it was "tasting" the barrier... She shuddered at the abomination that had floated in from the abyss... She held Spike tighter, "I promise... I won't let that thing hurt anyone... I won't let it out..."

Spike sniffled, nuzzling at her neck, "T-thanks Twilight... I just don't know what I'd do if we had to fight that thing without you..."

Twilight nodded, "You won't... I won't put myself in danger..."

They stayed like that a little longer, sighing deeply before letting go.

Spike was the first to speak up, "I'm gonna go... tell the other Princesses what's going on... I'll be right upstairs if you need me..."

Twilight nodded, "Right... I'll go figure out exactly what changed..."

Spike walked up the stairs, casting a worried glance behind him as he went. Twilight glanced back at him, then looked at the chamber. The creature had gone back to just standing there, staring with dead eyes. She took a deep breath... and walked to the side of the chamber.

The creature's head followed her.

"Getting better hang of fine motor control I see..." She glanced over it, horn lighting slightly as she enhanced her vision and looked it over. "Looks like you've put some sort of lattice of solid magic around you... Actually... It looks like you've somehow transmuted it into actual matter, but it doesn't look like it's made of anything real... Are you trying to make some sort of skin for yourself?"

The creature tilted its head, jerking again.

"I can't see your spellwork too well anymore... Looks a lot denser though... At this point your complexity is increasing logorithmically... I wonder how long you can keep that up..."

The creature jerked its head to the other side.

Twilight stopped, giving it a puzzled look, "...Are you... Trying to understand me?" She leaned in a bit, staring into its eyes... They didn't seem so dead now that she looked at them...

The creature jerked into a straight position, leaning slightly into her, eyes boring back into hers with sheer force of will.

Twilight backed away a few inches. She could practically FEEL the will coming off of this thing... Spellforms did not have their own will. Spellcasters put their will into them. This thing was determined to do... something... with her...

"Are you... Are you trying to communicate with me?" she asked.

The creature stared.

"Go ahead, say something." She opened her mouth and gestured with her hoof, "Speak!"

The creature stared.

"I. am. Trying. To. communicate. With. you." She said, loudly and clearly, making solid, resolute gestures to try and communicate intention.

The creature stared.

"Come on! Just open your mouth and show me you can communicate! Go 'ahhhh'..." she opened her mouth wide and just tried to get it to understand that simple concept of having sounds come out.

The creature's mouth jerked open, and for a moment, Twilight was left staring wide-eyed into the roiling mass within. Suddenly, with a loud screech, [url= /wVsY9PVIKsQ?t=22s][u]a shuddering, grainy wail[/u][/url] began to emanate from its mouth, causing various objects in the room to vibrate.

Twilight took a few steps back, eyes wide at the response.

"Woah, woah! What's going on down here?!" Spike was running down the stairs, quill in hand.

"...communication... I'm trying to get it to interact with me, but it doesn't seem to understand enough of what's going on for us to figure out a system yet..."

"Aaand... You think that's a good idea?"

"Well, Spike, if it's intelligent, the only way we'll know is if it tells us... In fact, at this point, that may be the only way to learn more about it..."

Spike nodded slowly, and was interrupted by a sudden burn of magic in his chest, "Ah... getting a letter..." he opened his mouth and let the magic out as fire, a scroll materializing in the air. He snatched it out of the air, checking the seal, "Looks like Celestia sent a message back. Want me to read it out loud?"

"Um..." Twilight looked at the creature in the chamber. It stared at the, silent and rigid. She took the scroll in her magic and unfurled it, both of them reading it in silence..."

[quote][i]Dear Princess Twilight,

As a fellow princess, I trust your judgement and will not presume to tell you how to proceed. In my opinion, however, this entity you have found is definitely capable of threatening Equestria, and I highly recommend that you do NOT release it from containment. My sister, Princess Luna, has been reading your reports, as she is the leading expert on this form of magic, and has already planned to join you in two days. Expect a letter from her tonight with her current thoughts, and expect a visit from her after sunrise in two days. In the meantime, please continue to monitor the spellform, send your observations, and maintain isolation procedures. I implore you, however, not to open the container.

Your Friend, Princess Celestia[/i][/quote]

"Well..." Spike spoke slowly, "There you have it."

Twilight nodded, "Yep... That pretty much settled the matter, if it wasn't already..."

Spike nodded, "I'll go tell her that..." he turned to leave again.

Twilight turned back to the chamber, "Right... I'll get to work on those wards..."  
[hr]

Twilight wandered down the halls from the kitchen to the lab, the cold oats she'd eaten for breakfast resting in in her stomach like cold dirt... Spike had been too scared to spend the night in the castle last night, leaving her alone... She glanced at a mirror she passed in the hall: she'd been spending most of her time trying to understand the creature in her lab, and hadn't even been outside the castle in at least a day. She'd barely slept the previous night, having spent hours looking over her time-lapse footage, reading over Luna's notes, cross-referencing her books, and working through the math of how fast this thing was changing... Maybe Spike was right, maybe she was letting this turn into an obsession...

No... She had to see this through... For science.

She made her way down the stairs to the lab, reaching out with her magic to flip on the switch for the electric lights as she walked towards the container...

She stopped dead in her tracks.

There was no blob of spell matter in the container. [i]She[/i] was in the container. Though... Not quite... What was in there looked like her, it was an Alicorn, the same size as her, with the same mane and tail cut, the same wing and hoof shape even... Like a perfect copy of her sillouhette, but... the colors were all off... Instead of purple, its fur had taken on a shade of grey, its mane was jet black, and it had no Cutie Mark. The only color it had was its eyes, which looked like painted glass orbs, their irises yellow as they stared at her dead and unmoving. The doppelganger showed an emotion too... It had a look of worry on its face... It's entire body, actually, standing tense and straight, as if it wanted to bolt at any moment...

Its mouth opened...

A sound came out...

...it formed words.

"[i]...Twilight... Sparkle...[/i]"


	4. Chapter 3: Sharpening the Lines

I don't remember much about what happened after I hit the planet's thaumosphere. I had only a vague sense of my surroundings as I was floating in an aether, what passed for my "mind" was made entirely of pieces I'd drawn together without a chance to really organize them. As I had no frame of reference, and time was otherwise without meaning to me, I don't know how long it was before I felt a sudden presence: a will acting upon me from outside... Something pulled me out of that whirlpool of energy, isolating my form, placing me into some sort of container, and... studying me?

I couldn't really comprehend what was going on at first, only that I'd found myself in a stable environment, and I had just enough cognition left to know that I needed to start weaving my spellform back together. I quickly found that most of my pieces had held together, and that I could rebuild my consciousness to the point where I could actually comprehend my situation. I figured out later that it wasn't until the third day after my observer had found me that I was able to sense my surroundings. I quickly discovered that I couldn't seem to work any magic through the walls of whatever cylindrical container, only sense concepts, and later, use sight and hearing to observe my observers.

The isolation chamber was safety to me: as a drifting mind without a body, I was vulnerable to external forces which would degrade me until I dissipated into nothing. Whatever civilization I'd come across though apparently had advanced magical technology to the point that they could isolate me in something similar to a vacuum chamber. Ambient energy could still permeate the walls of it, but nothing that would threaten a spellform under observation. By the fourth day, I'd managed to copy traits from the only coherent form nearby, my observer. I was now able to see and hear her and her assistant... A part of me registered them as "adorable", while another part registered them as the only thing standing between me and destruction. I had to communicate with them somehow... I tried motions, but found I didn't know any. At some point the one I'd realized was the main observer attempted to communicate with me verbally, but I had no concept of language, so I didn't know what the noises she made were supposed to be. I realized that mathematics were universal, and would communicate my intelligence, but I was once again, unable to communicate them in a way which my observer could understand.

I had to solve this tactically... I was clearly missing some crucial tool to interface with these other conscious beings. I searched through the various concepts which were pooling outside my chamber, at some point directly trying to phase some part of my form through the wall with little success. Eventually though, after my Observer had attempted to transfer it to me, I found the concept of their language, and figured out how to attach that to the rest of my mind, giving myself some sort of interface for interacting with them. I'd been experimenting with the concept when my observer entered the room, and I decided that this was the best opportunity to test my new ability: I'd learned a name, and I knew that if I said that name, she would instantly understand my intent to establish communication... Desperately, I reached out with all my will, begging for this to work...  
[hr]

"Twilight Sparkle."

She just stared at me for a moment, as if it was shocking that I had formed words after I'd pretty much vomited the Fibonacci Sequence on her the previous day. In hindsight though, trying to put information like that into sound when I didn't have a concept of words to work from might not have been the best strategy...

Finally she opened her mouth and responded, "You can [i]talk[/i]?!"

"I have acquired this ability, yes."

"So... You're self aware then? Like, a sentient being?"

"Affirmative. I am a conscious individual observing my surroundings."

"So.. how long have you been aware of this?"

"I have been a sentient creature for many years, but I lost my complete awareness some time ago and am only now regaining it."

"This is amazing! I have so many questions!"

"...You may ask as many as you wish, Twilight Sparkle, but I cannot promise you answers at this time..."

"Ok... Oh... where to begin... Um... I know!" Twilight had picked up her notepad and stared at me eagerly, ready to take notes, "What are you?"

"Energy... Thought... Form... I do not believe I am yet anything." At this point, I was still piecing together and analyzing what was left of Marilyn's mind: I didn't know who I'd been or where I'd come from. "I am aware that this is not my original form, and that something happened... I am now in this state."

"Oh... Well... Do you have a name then?"

"Yes."

Twilight paused, as if expecting more of a response than that. She added slowly, "Ok... well, what is it?"

That was a very good question! ...What was my name again? I gave her the straightforward answer, "Memory is... clouded... much of it lost... I do not know."

"Oh... I'm sorry... Is... is there something I should call you then?"

I paused... Nothing came to mind, and I knew whatever name I told her might be used as a descriptor for me for quite some time... "...I will think about this."

"Well..." she grasped, "are you... male or female?"

What an odd question... I looked back into the code of my base form... "...I... do not believe I possess any sexual traits... however, I believe I was female when I last had form, like yourself, and I suppose I still identify as such..."

"Ok... So... how do you work? Are you just made of pure magic? Where did you even come from?" I had the faint notion that she was starting to get agitated in some way, but I couldn't really empathize, being a near-emotionless blob and all.

At least she was on a good track though. "This, I can perhaps answer... I was once a student of magic, like you... I think... Something happened... An accident? An attack? I lost my physical form, and was shunted to your world by... some spell... I do not know why this has happened. I do not know what exactly I would be considered. I may simply be a spellform sustaining the consciousness and mind of its caster... Though, if this is the case, I am a very complicated spellform indeed... I will have to study my own workings in order to tell you more."

"I see... So you don't know anything else?"

"Not at this time: my memories are woven into the spellform you see around me. I have not yet had time to rebuild myself... If you give me time, I will be able to analyze my situation with more data, and then I will tell you what I have learned..."

"Well... That's promising I guess..." I could feel her giving up from across the room. I suppose she had thought that actually communicating with me would give her some concrete answers, but unfortunately, I was not yet capable of knowing them.

Something in me stirred... Was this... Empathy? "I am... I believe I am feeling 'sympathy' for your situation. I apologize that I cannot help you further your scientific understanding of this situation at this time."

She gave me a little smile, though it didn't seem real for some reason, "Oh, it's ok! I understand, you've been through a lot... Science... isn't the most important thing here..."

"I suppose this is true, but Science is, nevertheless, an important goal... I believe we have mutual understanding of this, as we are both scientists... If there is any way I can assist you, please inform me."

She perked up a little at that, for real this time, "Oh... Well... Would you be ok if I ran some tests?"

"Yes. I would very much like for you to run some tests!" I reconsidered for a moment, "...As long as they are not intrusive... I do not know how stable my form is at this point... I should like to see your results though..."

Twilight nodded, "Alright then, I'll just start with some harmless readings..." I felt her reach out with her power, projecting her will towards the machines about the room, along with a carrot from a box on the desk... I could see the magic she was projecting to make the objects move... I had realized in my earlier observations that the creature which was studying me was an impressive mage: she had a large supply of power, and was clearly very knowledgeable... but her Will... the previous day when I had pressed my will against hers as an attempt to communicate, I'd felt like a feather brushing against a brick wall... Granted, she'd stepped away at that, so perhaps she underestimates herself... I made a mental note to talk to her about it when this was all over.

*[i]crunch[/i]* "Yer shpellwork is increderbly complex..." she said idly, munching a carrot right next to the glass wall between us... Her machines were all running, and she was taking the time to look over me herself, making notes on the notepad like I'd seen her do before, but much slower, as if it mattered less and less...

"I am sustaining a full consciousness, capable of independent thought and spellcasting. Any such spell would have to be incredibly complex, and I look forward to further study." I responded, idly watching her work, "As I've implied, I hypothesize that I am actually a sentient being somehow made into a conceptual form... A meta-entity, if you will..."

She nodded thoughtfully, stepping away to examine the papers coming out of her machines. She took another bite of her carrot, chewed, and swallowed before commenting again, "Huh... Now that you've stabilized, I can see you have a remarkable amount of raw energy... You might actually have more raw power than any Mage on the planet... Save maybe a princess..."

"This would make sense, seeing as I am right now not much more than energy made form: I suppose I require this raw energy to keep myself alive..."

"I see... So... You seem to have an advanced understanding of magic..."

"Yes. This is what has allowed me to survive in this state."

"Ok... Do you... Remember where you learned this?"

"In college."

"Ah, so you studied Magic!"

"No. I studied..." what did I study? It's like I should know but I couldn't connect the words... "I do not believe your language has a word for what I studied."

"Oh... And you don't remember the details of that?"

"Your language does not have the necessary words. It was a technology that you have not yet discovered. I hypothesize that this is due to your formalized understanding of magic, which my world does not have."

She sighed, "Well that just brings up more questions... Do you know who taught you magic?"

"A secretive group."

"Ok... Can you tell me about them?"

"...I do not remember at this time." Part of me felt like I should feel bad about that, but my mind was too underdeveloped to be capable of sentimentality at that point, and I had no reason to be sad for people I did not remember.

"So... What do you remember about your life?"

"... I do not know. I have not had time to understand. Once I became aware of your presence, establishing communication was my primary objective. I have not yet fully analyzed nor Incorporated much of my being. I am, in a sense, a fraction of what I should be."

"Wow... Ok... So... I guess I should wait until you've done that?"

"This would allow me to give you more satisfying answers, yes."

Ok. In the meantime, I guess I should just keep running tests?"

"Yes. This would be helpful."

Twilight spent quite some time running tests with me, analyzing the nature and stability of my being. At some point, we moved beyond mechanics to exercises, where she'd ask if I could do something and I would try it. I found that I had the ability to take concepts, such as colors and shapes, and directly manifest them as part of my being. This made sense, as I myself was a being of pure concept. As this dragged on, our conversations meandered, away from talking about my situation and towards discussion of science and philosophy. I realized that this culture I'd been discovered by did not have the same level of mathematics and physics I was familiar with, but had far greater understanding of metaphysics and thaumaturgy. It would've been fascinating, if I could remember more, and from this, I actually felt a pang of sadness... I wanted to tell her about my world, and to learn more about hers, but I just wasn't able to...

Eventually, Twilight had exhausted her lines of exploration, and we'd run thin on topics to discuss. She looked up at the clock. "Well... It's pretty late... I should be getting to bed soon..."

"Yes. That would be a good course of action."

She looked at me with a bit of concern, "You're ok with being alone? I can stay if you're lonely... I mean, I understand if this is a little scary for you..."

"Fear is... Minor... Perhaps I lack the necessary point of reference to experience discomfort at the unusual nature of my situation. I am not worried by the prospect of being alone."

"Still... If there is anything I can do to make you more comfortable..."

I... think I actually managed to smile at this point, "There is comfort in the notion that you are here and wish to help. Your presence has provided me with a sense of security."

Twilight blushed a little, "oh! Well... I'm glad I make you feel safe. I... I'll keep trying to help you get yourself back together... I guess I'll... See you tomorrow morning?"

"I do not believe I will be leaving this containment. I shall spend your time of slumber attempting to rebuild my form in the safe environment it provides me."

"Um... Right! Well... Goodnight then."

"Goodnight, Twilight Sparkle. Thank you for your assistance."

She blushed again, "Oh... It's no problem... All in the name of science, right?"

"Yes. For science."

Twilight smiled a little as she left, and I moved on to the next task at hand... Rebuilding what was left of... Well... me...

[hr]

I set to work on picking what I'd put together apart and trying to piece it back to more effectively... Being in the container helped, as it was a solid barrier against magical forces, so that my pieces wouldn't float away and the ambient energy of the world wouldn't disrupt me.

I dissolved my form that I'd made, now knowing how to make one, and allowed myself to drift apart into a cloud, taking up the whole mass of the cylindrical container, separating my components to the point where I could work on them easily. I started to lay out the active components in an organized shape, figuring out each one.

The first thing to work on was untangling the parts of my mind which were active in this process... This was something I'd been working on, but every time was a risky, uncomfortable process: think of it as doing surgery on your own brain, except your brain is made of moving parts which could crash into each other. If I messed up, I might be back to rebuilding my own consciousness. If I'd been thinking straight, I'd've asked Twilight for help. At the time though, I was barely able to hold a conversation with her, let alone think to ask for assistance. Even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to explain what I was doing to her... Hell, I barely understood what I was doing. Such is the way of the scientific frontier though...

If you still have a body, I should probably apologize for how confusing this all probably is for you: I really don't have a frame of reference to what it's like to have one anymore. I mean, have you ever looked at your own mind, and seen the very thoughts you were thinking as you thought them? Let me tell you, it is a rather unique experience, and one which quickly became second nature to me in that infant state where I had developed too little understanding of things to realize the strangeness of it all. I vaguely remembered the brain surgery experiments which had been done on earth, where electrodes were used to stimulate the neurons of conscious patients to see what they thought: that whole process was essential to not accidentally lobotomizing someone during a routine biopsy. Considering how hard it had been to recover from my [i]last[/i] lobotomy, I decided to study this as much as I could before tampering with it. I started with a set of simple thoughts, numbers, noises, words, and moved on to concepts, observing each as it went along the pathway. I found that I was not confused by the speed at which they traveled, even though it had to have been near the speed of light. It was as if the temporal constraints of my mind had been removed, and time merely existed as a measurement of relative location in a single dimension.

That settled, I started to piece together the remaining frayed ends. I'd felt some emotions while talking to Twilight, and this had given me some perspective on what was what. I started to connect back my more complex emotions in the locations and patterns they belonged in, there was happiness and sadness, connected into sentimentality over lost memories... There were fear and anger... Pretty close to each other, as they're both defense mechanisms... hooking them up to my sense of self... Oh hey I haven't connected that par-

[b]I DON'T HAVE A BODY. HOLY SHIT. WHERE IS MY BODY!?[/b]

I went into full panic mode the second I reconnected human instincts, turning into a screaming, roiling mass of clouds. I was lucky Twilight's jar-thing contained me, because I don't know if I could keep my pieces together while twisting around myself like this.

[b]HOLY SHIT. WHAT DO I DO? MY BODY IS GONE![/b]

[i]Shut... the fuck... up![/i]

I felt my form go still, the concept split into several pieces in my grip, after I'd violently removed it. Ok, "Existential Dread" was [i]clearly[/i] not something I would benefit from at this point, as I was already non-existential and that wasn't changing any time soon. I set it aside at the far end of things so I'd be able to empathize with it later, but never actually had to deal with it. I marked down that as a problem for later...

I went to reconnect the other emotions, but something in the back of my mind stopped me... I was no longer burdened with direct emotion. Fear? That thing which prevents us from trying because we may fail? That was right there. I was literally looking at my sense of fear as it tried to tell my that doing this procedure on myself was unsafe. With a flick, it was completely disconnected, screaming it's distracting worries at nothing. With another flick, it was fully connected again, and I felt the desire to shudder with worry at what I was doing. I didn't, of course, because clouds don't have reflexes and I didn't bother to make one because, well, [i]I was doing surgery on my own fucking brain[/i].

I remembered reading several informed sources explaining to me that emotions are derived from a set of instincts, meant to give the brain a fast response in a drastic situation. Fear prevents us from harming ourselves, happiness is a reward response, anger is a defense mechanism. When attempting to use higher level cognition, to practice rationality and scientific thought, however, they get in the way. On top of that, they can play into these things called cognitive biases, which are when the instincts inherited from lower-order animals actually prevent the mind from understanding reality as it is. The most problematic example of this is when people gain new information, but reject it as a defense for their preconceived notions, even if those notions have no evidence, and have an emotional response because of that.

...Yeah, I could [i]really[/i] live without those right about now.

I started to build a new structure, which would allow me to directly bypass my emotions when thinking of things, making them a more supplemental process, rather than a gatekeeper. When one is not burdened by their emotions, they can act with purpose. There are many philosophies which talk about this, though your average westerner misunderstands them: you're not suppressing or removing emotions, you're simply not allowing them to control you, because, and this is essential for people to understand, [i]feelings are not intelligent, they are instinctual[/i]. Considering how badly I'd reacted to panic earlier, giving into them could actually be dangerous to a being being held together by sheer force of will like I was. The new structure I had would allow me to acknowledge and understand them reflexively, but prevent them from being more than another form of sensory input. Sure, I could always let sadness out to play later and have a good cry over the fact that I'd probably lost everything in the life I could barely remember, but right now, that was the past, and I had to deal with what was going on in the present.

Besides, crying is an anatomical response, and I have no anatomy, so why bother.

So yeah, when you have the ability to restructure your entire personality from near-screatch, and you don't have any of those pesky inhibitions in place making you worry about your precious "humanity", you use that opportunity to take pretty much all the things that don't directly relate to imposing your will on the universe and stick 'em in the back where they belong.

Anyway, with my personality fully intact and understood, it was time to move onto those memories Twilight had been so curious about. I started arranging them on one side of the tank and setting my perception and analysis on the other side, letting me shuffle through them like pages in a book.

Unfortunately, as I quickly remembered, that's not actually how memories work.

Many people think of memories as little videos that get saved in the back of your head, to be replayed at a later date. Anyone who's ever tried to recreate a set of memories from a long time ago quickly realizes that that's not the case. Memories, like most parts of the mind, are actually formed relationally, as a series of patterns which make reference to each other. For example, you may remember things from your childhood home, and have emotions connected to those memories, perhaps individual senses like smells or the perception of shapes. In reality, all of those are arranged as patterns in your neurons. The layout of your childhood home? A series of things you learned a long time ago pieced together with your understanding of how physical spaces operate. Memories of things that happened there? All utilize not only that same layout, but also other memories and concepts you learned a long time ago and have been using and updating repeatedly ever since. So the memories that I had were not only out of order, but they tried to make references that I didn't know, and possibly didn't even have access to. Think of it like a 10,000 piece puzzle, where the image is some insanely complicated diagram, pieces can be connected in incorrect ways, and you're actually missing most of the pieces, so good fucking luck trying to figure out what the diagram actually says.

This is one of the points where being an emotionless entity of pure will with a very relative concept of time becomes useful: I ignored my sense of despair and moved straight onto the task at hand... the long, tedious task of piecing these things together through trial and error... No, I was not happy when my friend died in front of me... Not sure what monster killed him, oh wait, here it is, Deep Ones. Yes emotional center, it is scary to know those exist. Moving on to helpful things... Oh neat, a list of names of authors I'd learned from. I sure bet knowing names like Plato, Aleister Crowley, Elizer Yudkowsky, Anton LaVey, and Friedrich Nietzsche would come in handy on another planet. At least I know who the guy with the golden parymid on his head is. Yes emotions, very cringe. Now... There's college with the advanced math and the degree in the thing that doesn't exist in this world...

...wait... Does it? I was looking at the concepts I'd learned for programming advanced math equations into machines, and it was sparking some knowledge of...

I flipped quickly through the other memories... There was the Deep One again. Why had I found that? Who were these people? ...Midnight Society, Computer Science, Etheric World, Astral Travel, the Dragon Knight series, Dream Walking, Systems Thinking, Inception, Concept Manifestation, Theory of Mind, Harry Potter, Theory of Power, Shadarak, His Dark Materials, Samasara, the Holy Trinity, Church of Satan, the Knights Templar, Object Permenance, Vampires, Hunters, Accountants, Werewolves, The FBI, Ghosts and Spirits, the Exarchs, the reptilians who control the world government, the God Machine, the Abyss...

...woah... Ok... That's a lot of useful information...

Now that I'd managed to find a thread which gave a solid idea of what my adult life looked like, it wasn't too hard to piece the rest of it back together. I made sure to keep the stuff about magic near the top, because that was what I was going to need, and let the stuff about this girl whose name I couldn't remember fall to the bottom: whoever she was was likely gone for good, and who I was would rise from her corpse.

Enlightened by my own intelligence, as a fedora wearing jackass would say, I looked back at my own spellform. Things made a lot more sense when you were running at full capacity and actually KNOW how these structures are made and arranged. It was fascinating, not only seeing what had come together when I'd been desperately trying to regain consciousness, but what that first spell had done with my original mind. I'd never seen a mage actually work something like this, but something told me this wasn't a result of direct spellcraft. It was like something had melted my physical form down and made me into my base concepts, conserving everything but my body as a pure idea. What came out wasn't simply a construction of the spell, but a constant of the universe: I'd somehow become my own platonic form, and now I was dicking around with it like it was made of legos. No, this wasn't structured magic, it was too organic. There was so much information to process here... So much I could speculate... If only I had a notepad, like Twilight's...

...could I conjure one? I knew what it looked like... If I focused my will on it...

A notepad materialized in the jar with me. Yes! I lifted it in my aura and... Wat.

Upon further examination, I'd created something which had the appearance of a notepad, but did not actually have the physical function of one. Apparently manifesting items in reality isn't as simple as willing them into existence. Go figure.

I quickly discovered that I could absorb the matter of my fake notepad back into my own energy just as easily as I created it. Useful, I'd have to explore the applications of that later.

In any case, the memories and personality being mostly handled for now, I moved onto matters of presentation. I could now make a voice close to what I believed my original to sound like, and I now had a more detailed personally behind it... What stood to be changed was the form itself.

I didn't want to simply mimic the look of Twilight, so I began to experiment with other variations on that form...

I started with my shape. Twilight's was a good base: a form with many structures for running energy along... Perhaps this could be improved?

I altered my horn to have a better surface area, giving it a bit of a curve to help direct magical energies. I did a similar process with my wings, straightening the feathers into spears, creating a sort of dish out of them for whatever casting I might do from them. My bones were also part of this: I gave them a slightly more bowed shape too. I realized that I could take this a step further, and started rearranging the actual bone fibers. They wouldn't be as stable, but I wasn't exactly worried about osteoporosis here. Hooves made of the same material as the horn and not covered by fur, to keep a solid conduit for magic.

Next I figured I should do something about Twilight's boring mane... I mean... it was her, but it wasn't me. See, in Equestria, Magic is a highly formalized field of study, but back on my homeworld, Magic is typically studied by libertines working on the outside of society. I recalled liking the look of some sort of cosmic field on a pony, so I created that... It was pretty, this purple and black thing floating around my head, but I realized quickly that it wouldn't look natural: even Twilight didn't have that sort of hair...

I'd remembered having a sort of orange hair before, in my previous form... I wondered how hard it would be to simply lift the concept from my memories and place it in... I looked over what I remembered and carefully built the concept into the spellform, aaand... Apparently manifesting new traits onto my own form from known concepts was something I could do pretty easily if I actually took the time to structure them. I copied it over and set the tail to match... It was all very pretty.

I glanced down at my dark-grey coated body: its color was the product of direct magical flow. I toned it a couple shades darker, and decided it suited me.

I externalized my point of view and looked myself over, making a few finishing touches. All in all, I was a very pretty pony, and I would definitely enjoy brushing my own hair. Something was missing though...

I remembered the symbol on Twilight's flank. Somehow, my memories were telling me it was called a... "Cutie Mark?" I realized that hers was representative of a magical force of Harmony of which she was the chosen avatar. I needed to think of one for myself.

At first, I was tempted to put it off, but I worried it would make me stand out more than I wanted to. Granted, standing out wasn't really an issue, seeing as I was already an alien with otherworldly powers...

...Then again, I already had a special talent... I just needed a symbol for that...

I considered the situation. I was an occultist, I was unmade, and now I've been remade as a creature of concept... In a sense, I'd achieved a form of enlightenment: people have spent their entire lives trying to experience the level of ego-death I'd been given by virtue of having my soul torn out of my body... Through a cycle of death and rebirth, I'd achieved a purer state... There was a single concept in the symbology I remembered which talked about a path to purification through death and resurrection...

Saṃsāra: The Wheel of Life.

With a brief bit of work, I had a picture of a golden, 8 spoked wheel on my butt. I could've made it actually spin, but I decided not to, once again, for the sake of blending in.

With that done, I took a moment to reflect on what I had been through (my sense of fear had subseded for my sense of pride, which was now trilling in the back of my mind). I grinned a little as I turned around, looking over my body for a bit. I couldn't even believe that only a few days ago I was a barely conscious cloud of stuff, and now I'd managed to take the form of an actual pony!

With a sigh, I settled in, sitting down and meditating on everything that had happened while I waited for Twilight to return. As it turned out, I didn't have long to wait...  
[hr]

Twilight came down the stairs and flipped the lights on, as she'd done every day so far, and slowed down as she took in my new look. "Wha-? Oh... I see you've altered your form again."

I smiled, "Yes. I wanted to interact with you normally, and I figured it would be easier if I looked like a real pony. This seemed the most appropriate way of representing myself as a member of your species."

Twilight nodded, looking me over, "I see... Well, it's very nice... But you weren't a pony before, were you? Do you remember what your original species looked like?"

I shook my head, "I think we were featherless bipeds, but all I can remember was the way my hair looked..."

Twilight nodded more, walking in a circle around me to get a full view. I lowered my tail a little, my emotions telling me that I was rather exposed, though I didn't know why, seeing as I could see just as much of Twilight. Was this a normal interaction for her species, but not mine?

She continued, "I see you've chosen a cutie mark, but I'm not sure what it means... Is that the symbol for chaos?"

I shook my head, "Chaos? No... What makes you say that?"

She pointed with her hoof, "a circle, eight arrows pointing from the center, the cycle of entropy."

I thought about that one, "Huh... I guess that could be an interpretation... I intended the wheel of time: the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, that all things go through as one. On my planet, it is a symbol of a process one uses to achieve Harmony with the natural order... Though, I guess entropy is a healthy part of that..."

"Interesting..." She thought for a moment, "So, do you know why Ponies have symbols on our flanks, or was it just a stylistic decision?"

"It's a cutie mark. A stylized representation of your special talent, right?"

Twilight nodded, "Right... How did you know that though? Did your species have them, or...?"

I paused... That was a good question. How [i]did[/i] I know that? "I'm not sure..." I replied, "it just seemed like a known fact..." ...but where did I learn it?

"Fascinating... You've already exhibited the ability to pull concepts into your form... Maybe knowledge of what words mean is part of the language?"

"That's possible... By the way," I chirped, "it's Meta."

"What?"

"The last time we spoke, you asked what you should call me. I am a Meta-form, a product of metaphysical reality. Call me 'Meta'." I grinned a little.

"Oh!" she smiled, "Well then, Meta, it's nice to have something to call you!" She walked back towards the front of the chamber, reaching out with her magic and moving the machines over again. "You seem to have a much more defined personality today, by the way: yesterday you were almost speaking in monotone. Today you seem downright chipper!"

"Was I?" I asked, "Well, I have a much broader range of emotions now, so there's alot more to express." I looked around at the various machines as they hummed to life.

"Right." Twilight agreed half-absently, making sure all the machines were set up properly before coming over to sit on her haunches next to the chamber, magic holding her notebook beside her, "So... I take it you've regained most of your memories by now?"

"Somewhat..." I replied, "I've been able to cobble together more of my personality, though it is still a bit odd because clearly there are large chunks missing from it. Most of the actual memories I've looked through have been incomprehensible: I can see what I was going through, but there's key information I have no context or point of reference for, so it's just coming out as gibberish..."

"But... Aren't they your memories?" Twilight looked up from the notes she was making.

"Yes and no... Memories often rely on references to other memories and personality traits to be understood. Without many of the formative memories pieced together, I don't have a point of reference to make sense of the less formative ones... I feel that given more time to explore myself, I will be able to re-build my personality and understand what is happening."

"But... If you already have all the pieces together, how would you recover ones you don't have?"

"Picture a painting with white around the edges. Imagine you wanted to see more. From the original work, you can understand a close approximation of what is not drawn in the margin, and paint new scenery that fits, even though your new paint is a generalization which loses the fine details. As I learn to understand how my personality and emotions function in practice, I will learn how to properly interpret my memories."

"Ok... So... How do you plan to do that?"

"Simple." I said as the machines started to quiet around us, making their little beeps to inform Twilight that they were done collecting data, "Open this chamber so I may interact with your world, and learn from this experience."

Twilight stared, a look of hesitation growing on her face, "I... Don't know about that... You're an unknown entity of unknown power, and you've come to exist through highly unnatural circumstances... I don't think it would be safe for me to just let you out of this chamber..."

I was left with a blank. Twilight hadn't been planning on letting me out. She had been planning on keeping me contained indefinitely.

A part of my memory chimed in that I was on the wrong end of something called the "AI in a Box" conundrum.

Picture a researcher who has created a self modifying artificial intelligence which has surpassed their understanding of how it thinks. This AI would be capable of bringing about radical change on a global scale, but for now it is being kept in isolation, and is thus unable to do anything but talk to the researcher. In order to be let out, the AI must convince the researcher that it is not a threat, but the problem is, the researcher has no way of knowing that the AI isn't lying, because a self-modifying entity is fully capable of programming itself for uncanny deception. Whatever the case, the researcher and the AI are left with an inevitable ultimatum: while the two could theoretically talk indefinitely, in the end, there are only two solutions. Either the researcher lets the AI out of the box... or she destroys it before someone else can.

Fortunately, I could already model that Twilight had no intention of destroying me, and that left me with the problem of convincing her to let me out: I had to convince Twilight that I was either not a threat, or that I was already at my most threatening. That's not an easy task when both of us knew I was only a few iterations away from being able to break containment and turn myself into something like a Grey Goo scenario: a self replicating entity which uses matter around it to create more of itself, spreading uncontrollably until it had consumed the entire world, leaving it as nothing but a uniform coat of that entity.

Obviously I wasn't going to do anything like that, but I had to give Twilight enough reason to believe this was an acceptable risk. I started by reviewing my situation...

Fact: I am a self-modifying entity of unknown origin or potential.  
Fact: Twilight has effectively contained me such that it is impossible for me to leave on my own at this time.  
Fact: in order to continue developing my personality, I must leave this containment.  
Fact: I can self-modify to overcome this obstacle manually.  
Fact: Twilight is capable of enhancing these wards to prevent me from doing this.  
Query: Is this indefinite? Perhaps I could iterate to the point I could break out... How long could Twilight keep up with this? Would doing so convince her to destroy me before I could escape? Would I even want to play that scenario out with her?  
Conclusion: convincing Twilight to release me is the most viable option.  
Fact: Two rational actors, working from the same priors, cannot disagree.  
Query: is Twilight a rational actor?

Only one way to find out.

[b]Attempt #1 - Appeal to Emotion[/b]  
"Twilight..." I said after that pause, allowing sadness to drip into my voice, "I thought we were friends... If you don't let me out, I'll never be able achieve my potential as an individual. Don't you trust me? Please let me out..." My voice was wavering by the end of that, eliciting an empathy response. Not that I was at all lying: I did consider her a friend at this point, and I was feeling sad that she didn't trust me, but of course, I no longer showed emotions like that unintentionally.

Twilight steadied herself a little, clearly discomforted by the prospect, but staying resolute, "I'm sorry Meta. We are friends, and I don't want to keep you in here either, but we both know that you're a potentially dangerous entity, and blatant appeals to my emotions aren't going to change that." She didn't seem comfortable saying that, but I could tell her will was pretty absolute.

Conclusion: Twilight is a rational actor.  
Fact: Twilight believes the risks of releasing me outweigh the benefits.  
Query: Is Twilight aware of all the benefits?

[b]Attempt #2 - Bargaining[/b]  
"But Twilight," I said, "Think of all the things you could learn from me: I'm a being of pure magic from a world with an entirely different approach to the craft. Think of all the things you can learn from me if you just let me out!"

Twilight nodded, briefly considering the notion, "The offer is intriguing, but it doesn't change the situation: my desire for knowledge isn't a reason to let my guard down, and if you were a malicious entity using deception, it wouldn't matter what you promised me. Besides, I can learn plenty without breaking containment. I mean, you aren't going to stop talking to me just because I can't let you out, are you?"

I nodded, frowning, "Right... And I think you understand enough about theory of power to call my bluff if I threatened to ostracize my only source of stimulation..."

Twilight frowned, but nodded, "Sorry Meta, but it's true. The benefits just don't outweigh the risks."

Conclusion: Twilight has greater interests than knowledge.  
Implication: Twilight feels ethical responsibilities to others.  
Query: Do Twilight's ethics support her actions?

[b]Attempt #3 - Ethics[/b]  
"Twilight," I stated calmly, "I believe that it is un-just for you to keep me against my will. By doing so, you have impeded my freedom of movement and impeded my ability to self actualize. This is a violation of my rights as a self-aware being."

Twilight faltered at that one, "Oh... Well... That is true: you act self aware, therefore you must be..." In that moment, I was glad she'd never heard of philosophical zombies. She continued, "I suppose we didn't consider that when we developed our isolation procedures... Still... Do your rights to freedom override the needs of my world's population for safety? I hardly think you can argue that."

Oh shit. She had me there: utilitarianism, the goal of creating the most good for the most individuals, is the most practical and easily applied ethical norm. There isn't really an argument against it when you're dealing with things of this magnitude. I'd have to find another way around...

Conclusion: Twilight is acting ethically, to the best of her knowledge.  
Fact: Twilight is also aware that her knowledge is heavily flawed.  
Query: How well do Twilight's priors respond to scrutiny?

[b]Attempt #4 - Appeal to Reason[/b]  
"What evidence do you have that I'm even dangerous? You and I both know that simply knowing what I am gives you the power to stop me, and so far I've shown no desire to do anything but cooperate. I haven't even made an attempt to escape while you were gone! Am I not innocent until proven guilty?"

Twilight's will was faltering, I could feel it, "I... I don't know what to tell you Meta, ponies are really scared of what you can do, and you get stronger by the day... They trust me, and I can't guarantee that I could protect them from something like you..."

"Twilight, Justification through fear isn't evidence, it's an appeal to emotion, and you can't use emotions to figure out the truth: you and I both know that that's not how science works." I stomped my hoof, "Twilight, I just want to see your world and be your friend! Stop clinging to your emotional notions of comfort and let me out of the damn jar!"

Twilight stood up, taking a step back and raising a forehoof, "I... I don't know Meta... you make a really good point, and I really want to be a good friend, but I have no way of proving you aren't planning something dangerous, and I can't subject others to that risk..." She was shaking a little at this point, "I... I promised Spike I wouldn't let you out... I... I can't just..." she trailed off, giving me a helpless look.

Conclusion: Twilight's only justification for her actions is the faint notion that the fears of outside observers may be justifiable.  
Fact: Twilight had all the evidence she needed to disprove them.

[b]Attempt #5 - Logic[/b]  
"Twilight," I softened my tone a little, "If I was trying to deceive you, I could tell you any number of lies..."

I restructured my form, becoming smaller and more fragile, speaking in a pathetic tone, "I could tell you that I was a little child, and that I was scared and needed a hug."

I restructured my form again, floating in the air, 6 forelegs with hands at the end spread out like some Hindu Daeva, "I could claim that I am a cosmic guardian, and that every moment you kept me here was another moment that the universe was threatened."

I restructured my form into Spike, that little dragon who'd been assisting her the previous day, trying to mimic his voice, "I could even pretend to be one of your friends, trapped in the jar when the creature escaped! You'd have no way of proving that I wasn't lying, and you'd be emotionally compromised."

I restructured my form back to the pony form I'd been in before... Ack! I almost fell ran out of energy mid-materialization, barely resisting falling apart into a cloud again... whew... ok... sudden burst of will... sudden draw of power... Don't do that again until I know what I'm doing... I made a panting motion to show my exhaustion from the change for a moment, then continued. "Right... Sorry..." I straightened up, "Twilight, the point I'm making is that I could have done any number of things if I was lying or had malicious intentions. You KNOW that. We BOTH can think of so many ways I could've tricked you into letting me go. That's not what's happening though. What's happening is I'm trying to walk you through a logical reason why you should willingly let me out. There is only one logical reason for me to behave in that way Twilight. What is that reason?"

Twilight took a deep breath, nodding back and forth for a moment, as if reaching for a reason to deny me. She couldn't find one, "...The only reason I can think of for your current course of action is... that you want to cooperate... because you want to be friends..."

"Right. So we're in agreement?"

"I... I guess we have to be... I mean, two rational actors working from the same priors can't disagree... That's just a logical constant..." She looked aside, "But... I promised Spike I wouldn't let you out... Can't we... can't we wait for him, and at least convince him that this is safe first?"

I thought for a moment, "Isn't Spike the one who said you couldn't let me out because he was scared of me?"

Twilight nodded, "Yeah, he's my... assistant. We decided that you shouldn't be let out without heavy oversight back when you first started changing."

"Ok, well... I think we've already established that, not only is the fact that he's afraid not a reason to keep me in here, but rules you made before I started talking to you can't really be applied..."

"Yeah... but... I promised him..."

"Right, and when he gets here, he might try to convince you that I'm still scary, and that you shouldn't let me out, and then I have to wait even longer..."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll like you once he meets you..."

"But when will that be? Will you decide that you need somepony else there? How many second opinions are you going to need for something you've already agreed is reasonable?"

"Well... I mean... You can never be too careful..."

I stood firm. "Twilight, I think we both know that getting a second opinion is just an excuse to delay the inevitable. Two rational actors working from the same priors cannot disagree. You have to let me out. You know that. You have no justifiable reason to hold me against my will, and I have every right to be allowed out. This is the only course of action which stands up to scrutiny."

She turned to take a step towards the controls, hesitating, looking back at me over her shoulder, "You... you promise you won't hurt anypony?"

"Twilight," I said firmly, "I promise I have no intention of hurting anypony ever, especially not you and your friends. In fact, the first thing I'm going to do if you let me out is walk over there to give you a big hug, just so you know that we're still friends."

Twilight stood where she was for a few seconds, mentally preparing herself for the transgression she was about to make...

She walked slowly to the controls, stopping to face them... glancing back at me... looking back down as she raised her hoof to them, just staring at it as she thought of the line she was about to cross...

I could feel terror, uncertainty, and even despair emanating from her shivering form. But I'd won, we both knew I'd won. There was no other course of action she could justify to herself. Twilight's hoof rested on the lever. She took a deep breath, and her hoof moved the lever...

With the hiss of a hermetic seal being broken, Twilight let me out of the box.


	5. Chapter 4: Filling in the Blank Spaces

As the containment around me lifted, I let my head lol back, opening my mouth and taking it in... Being back in the ambient flow of energy, now that I was firmly anchored to the physical plane, had a liberating feeling, possibly akin to feeling a strong breeze through your hair after spending a week inside a hospital room. In the chamber, it had been silent, alone. Now, immersed in the free flow of energy, I experienced a feeling of connection to this world, its denizens, its environment... I was no longer a being apart, but a part of its being.

Twilight was looking at me with a note of wonder: my hair was literally flowing in an invisible breeze, power rippling through my hide. I grinned at her, laughing a bit: a few moments ago, I'd experienced a tense moment of a prisoner pleading for freedom. Now, I just wanted to hug her. Speaking of that...

I rushed at Twilight, causing her to give a little squeak of surprise as I halfway tackled her, embracing her in my forelegs and cuddling her close, nuzzling with my new muzzle. She blushed again, ahhh, Twitwi is best pony: so adorable! 3

Ahem. Not sure where that came from...

Anyway, after a moment of realization, Twilight tentatively hugged me back, also chuckling, though a little less comfortably than I was.

Ah, she'd get over it.

"Thanks Twilight! I'm so glad you let me out!" I gave her another snuggle.

"Heh, well, you made a good argument for it! I'm just glad you're not mad at me..."

I shrugged a little, "Ah, it's ok Twilight, I'd've probably done the same thing if a self-modifying entity had shown up on my world..." Gee... I sure was enjoying this close, personal contact thing... Twilight had this really pleasant ambient field, like being close to something warm and inviting.

There was something else too... This weird, innate desire to groom her mane or something... Like... Something about the prospect of brushing her hair as a comfort action felt very normal, as if my memories insisted I had some sort of familiarity with her... Perhaps I'd known a similar person in my previous life?

"So..." she asked, pulling away a little, "What are you planning on doing now?"

"Isn't it obvious?" I grinned, "Science!" I reached out with my own will, mimicking the telekinesis I'd seen Twilight use, and the whole lab was awash with papers, the test results from today lined up with those from the previous days. Grinning up at the information, I sat down on my haunches next to

"Alright!" I said excitedly, looking at how the various graphs and sets of numbers changed with each day, "...what does any of this mean?"

"I take it you don't remember numerical spell analysis?"

"I'm not sure we had this on my world... We were less advanced in magic, but if those lights are modern, more advanced with things like electricity..." I gestured to her ramshackle electric lights, which were clearly a newer addition to the structure, but registered to me as obsolete technology.

"Oh." Twilight said, "That's... Not at all what we'd assumed... It'd be really interesting to hear about that later."

I nodded, "I'll tell you what I can, eventually..." I turned my attention back to the papers, "So, what does this stuff mean?"

"Oh! Well, that first one is a spectrographic reading of your magical energy. It detects the specific frequencies of a spellform to help figure out how it was made. At the beginning, over here," she pointed to the far left with her nose, "you had this entirely alien reading. But as you can see," she swung her head slowly to point at the far right, "it changed over time... This latest one is almost identical to the background aura of my lab. I was actually hoping you could tell me more about that: I'd never seen that sort of behavior before."

"Well, two things, one was that I needed to rebuild the spellforms that I was made of, and your world's energy was plentiful. The other was that having the same frequency meant I'd have a more stable, native form in your environment, though it adds to the complexity in some places. Mostly though, I was just working with what I had to build a stable body to anchor myself to..."

Twilight nodded, writing down notes. She'd pulled over her notepad at some point while I was talking, "I see... That explains a few things. This next one is a lattice analyzer. It gives the size and density of a spellform. You actually started getting the maximum reading this machine gives for a few things on the fourth day after I found you." She pointed to the first one, "This was the first reading, on the second day, when you were a cloud." She moved to the second reading, "This was the third day, when you'd turned into that blob with tendrils." She pointed to the third day, where exclamation points had been printed around the big number, "This is the fourth day, when you started trying to look like a pony. As you can see, your thread-count goes above what the machine gives accurate readings for, and it just keeps getting more inaccurate from there. Same with density," she pointed to a small graph, the middle of which had made a rough line at the top of its chart on the 2nd reading, which just kept getting bigger as the days went on, "You were too dense for it on the 3rd day. I don't know how you managed to keep your spellwork that dense without it interfering with itself..." she looked at me questioningly.

"Well..." I said, sitting back a bit and making the hide that formed my chest transparent, so that she could see the clockwork spellform inside me, "Some parts, like my memory, actually rely on that interference to function efficiently, others, like the way I'm actually storing information, utilize subspacial folding. I believe I may even have a few ten dimensional structures in there..."

Twilight's pencil slowed, "...but... There are only nine dimensions..."

"Nine known dimensions, that you've discovered."

Twilight drew a blank for a moment, then flipped her page back and started scribbling more notes, "Oohhh my gosh... Are you sure? I mean, you're sure you're not mistaken about this? Because the discovery of a tenth dimension completely changes several models of unified theory... I mean, unicorns have only been able to sense five without enhanced perception, and we only know about the ninth because of the Hoofings Equations..."

"Unicorns aren't ten-dimensional magical entities from the Void." I allowed myself to get a little smug, "I can pretty much sense any dimension I'm able to operate in, but I can understand why you're surprised: I think my people only discovered five or six of them..." I thought about that, "Wow... I'm like a walking science experiment!"

Twilight looked at me, "So... So wait... You're saying you can just SEE these other dimensions?"

...a slow smile spread over my face... "Twilight. Remember the flying books from your dream last night?"

She stopped, "Yeah... Kind of... Wait how did you-"

I reached down into the Dream World, stretching my arm out for a few meters in that direction as I did so, and yanked out a flying book, grinning at Twilight as it flapped in my hoof.

Her eyes practically bugged out of her head, "HOLY SHIT!" She almost dropped her notepad, "How did you do that? Even Princess Luna can't do that! You didn't even build a portal, you just did it! HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?"

I laughed instead of responding to her for a moment: screwing with Twilight's sense of reality was way too much fun. I let the book go, and it started flapping about haphazardly on the floor, its tiny wings unable to support it in the gravity of the Waking World. "Ok, ok... Let me explain... Remember how we were talking about the non-cardinal dimensions? One of them is the dimension of thought. It's a bit like time, where it has this one-directional flow, but unlike time, things can and do travel against it through the application of Will. The physical, Waking world, is sitting on top of this endless depth of concepts and thoughtstuff, part of which we know as the collective subconscious. You go down far enough, and you start getting some really weird stuff: I don't know what's past the collective subconscious, and all I know about the other direction is that Platonic Concepts supposedly get pulled down from there."

"...Platoni-what now?"

"That's not important right now. What's important is, because I can [i]perceive[/i] that dimension like any other, and I'm not bound by the limits of a being truly bound to the physical plane, I can [i]interact[/i] with it. Grabbing that book was just a matter of reaching in that direction and yanking something that was lingering there from the dream you just woke up from."

"Well, that's... Wait... are you telling me you can just move across non-cardinal directions at will?"

I laughed again, "That would be impressive, but no. I mean more in the sense that I can simply interact with non-cardinal directions without the need to bend them parallel with the cardinal directions with a portal. The book was sitting on the top of the Dreamtide, so I could snag it without stretching my form too far in. I don't think I can actually move myself in those directions... Yet... But I certainly seem to have developed a knack for parlor tricks... With experimentation, this could have some real application."

Twilight stood up and started pacing in earnest, "Holy shit Meta... You literally just subverted the laws of reality, and you're calling it a parlor trick! I'm not even sure how many cutting-edge theories about the function of reality you just rendered obsolete with that, how many spells you bypassed by just... You just did it! I don't even know, I can't even! What do you-"

"Uh oh..."

"WHAT IS IT!?" Twilight shot over to me, looking me over.

"The book." I pointed at a spot on the floor.

She looked, "I don't... Where did it go?"

"Oh, it dissipated into thought stuff and subsumed back into the dream world. But it did it while I was watching it..." I narrowed my eyes.

"Is that normal?"

I shook my head, "They're not supposed to be able to do that while being observed... See, things from the Dream World lack something called 'object permanence'. Picture the Dream World as a body of water, and we're all sitting on the surface here in the Waking. We can dive in, grab something, and pull it out, but it can't really keep it's form in the Waking world without an observer. This means that things from dreams can only exist in the Waking while someone is actively watching them. If you stop paying attention to them, even for a moment, they lose their form and vanish, like an air bubble meeting the surface of the water. I don't think I've ever seen one of them vanish while I was watching, back when I did this on my home world. All I know, well, [i]think[/i], is that the fact that it did means that I don't count as an active observer anymore..."

"Wow... So... What does that imply?"

"I don't know. That I'm actually dead? I've only ever seen this from creatures that don't have object permanence themselves... Which... I... have...?" I stared off into space, awkwardly feeling at my not-meat body with my forehooves, as if that would tell me if I was about to dissipate.

"Well... that's odd then...?"

"Yeah, it is... I'll have to look into this. It may explain something about the nature of the dream world..."

There was a moment of awkward silence, which Twilight broke, "So..." she looked around, "I found some other pieces of what I'm guessing were your memories floating around..."

"Really? Lemme see!"

"Right over here..." Twilight walked over to a shelf, on which several crystal domes sat, each of which housed a shimmering spellform.

I followed her over, sensing the familiar barrier of that crystal substance she'd been using to contain me before. I made a note to ask her about the material later. "Interesting... Would you mind if I took them back? I mean, I'd like them back, but if it's important to you to keep them longer..."

Twilight shook her head, "No, no, I think I've learned all I can from them. Besides, they're yours, so it's better if you just took them back. Who knows, you might even find something useful in them." she smiled.

Carefully, I wrapped my magic around one of them, reaching out with my forehooves to lift the dome, pulling the delicate lattice of spellwork and energy out and setting the dome back down. I looked at it for a moment in front of my face, thinking about how best to bring it inside my body. After a moment, the easiest method seemed good enough: I brought it to my face, opened my mouth, and reached out a few tendrils to grasp it and pull it inside.

Twilight winced next to me, "Uh... Meta? Could you warn me before you do creepy stuff like that?"

"Creepy stuff like what?" I asked, 3 stray tendrils still floating out of the sides of my mouth.

She pointed a hoof at my mouth, "The tentacles coming out of your orifices. Normal ponies don't do that. Actually, I don't think normal [i]anything[/i] does that..."

"Oh..." I said, slurping the tendrils back inside, "I don't really have the same sense of unnaturalness as physical beings anymore, so my definition of 'creepy' isn't really well developed..."

"Ah... right..." she winced as I repeated the process with the second, third, and fourth. "So... Is that it? Do you just knows what's in them, or is there some process to reintegrate them?"

"Hmm... I was going to analyze these later, but if you want, I could demonstrate and explain the process to you as I go."

Twilight grinned, nodding vigorously, "Oh yes please! I'd love to hear all about how you do that!"

"Alright!" I nodded, turning my focus inward as I handled the new concepts. "First step, I have to analyze the structure and find the endpoints of it, figure out where the pattern begins and ends so I can see how it's supposed to hook in..."

"That's some pretty complex spellwork, how do you manage to keep track of it?"

"I had to optimize and expand how much information I can keep in my mind at once. It was one of the things I did over the past few days when trying to rebuild myself."

"Wow... Ok... So you just rewrote yourself to be better at casting... I... Kinda wish I had that kind of power..."

"Maybe I'll figure out a way to replicate the process for you then... I mean, without tearing you apart and all that. Anyway, right now I'm going over the connection points of this mindform to see how it responds. I can tell that it's mostly facts because it's all very referential: it's meant to be linked to other memories and used for background information. Early on, these were hard for me to figure out: it wasn't until I realized I needed to hook them to other memories that I could actually use them for details. Anyway, now I know how to look over the whole thing from one endpoint, and I found that on this one, so I'm doing that now..."

"Oh! What's it about?"

"Oh... This one's some basic information on... You'll like this: it's about my homeworld."

Twilight's eyes lit up, "Really? What's it say?"

"Well, it doesn't really 'say' anything, it's just vague concepts and definitions... It seems I was a member of a race of bipedal primates known as 'humans', who just about mastered electricity and were experimenting with space travel... My homeworld's name would translate to something like 'Terra' or 'Earth', and had several landmasses, with temperatures ranging from about 40 degrees Centigrade to well below freezing... I'd have to know more about your world to tell you what's actually different, or to have the context to really interpret most of this stuff... I'm going to be honest with you, I don't feel like I specialized in biology or planet science, so I don't even know how much of this would actually impress you..."

Twilight nodded, "Well, I'd definitely like to hear more about your species and planet when you can tell me... Is there anything else you want to share?"

"Hmm... Let me look over the next one... This should only take a moment..." I got the connection and ran it through my consciousness. "Oh... Hmm... That could be useful..."

"What is it?"

"...I think this is the memory of the last time I was fully self aware..."

Twilight began to nod, slowly, as she pieced it together, "You mean, when you were..."

"Yeah... Weird thing is, it starts out like I was at some sort of,.. event... a festival I think? I was trying to... buy... something... and I was pulled into... a hole or something... and I was hit by someone's spell..." I looked it over a bit more, "Ok, yeah, someone yanked me out of a festival of some sort and into a big empty part of the Dream world, and hit me with some spell that tried to tear me apart and put me back together as something else... but I guess I countered it halfway through and came out like... this..."

"So, this is the result of an attack, but not the intention?"

"The intention was to send me to this world after transforming me into something new. Maybe a monster, I don't know. The caster put a failsafe in the spell which tried to unmake me when I tampered with it, so I think it's safe to say that they're not the good guy here..."

"You think it might be someone in Equestria? Some enemy trying to use souls from beyond the Void for an invasion force?"

I shook my head, "No. Whoever it was was very far away, but very powerful... I think we're looking at something that lives out in the Void here..."

Twilight cringed at the thought, "A Void Dweller... What would it want with our worlds though?"

"I don't know..." I furrowed my brow, "I hope we don't have to find out any time soon..." I looked inward for a moment as Twilight gulped, "In any case, I'm not sure what the other two pieces you found are: they're not very coherent, and I just don't have enough context to fill them in..."

"Sounds like we've got some exploring to do later then."

"Right."

"Hey Um... Meta? Can I see your spellform again?"

"Hmm? Sure. Just don't poke it too much, ok? This is basically my brain I'm exposing here..." I subsumed the physical form I had around me, letting the matter of it melt back into energy as I just let myself turn back into that cloud, held together by my will to exist. I unfolded a bit for her, spreading out a little more so she could see it all clearly.

Twilight's eyes bulged a little as she watched, causing her to cringe and take half a step back, "That's... Disturbing that you can just... do that... I mean, fascinating, don't get me wrong, but wow..."

"Yeah, I found it a bit odd once my personality came back. I actually had to manually remove my own sense of existential dread at the notion that I don't really have a body anymore..."

Twilight hesitated a little, "Wait... you can modify your own... personality? I mean... You're actually turning off your emotions?"

"Yeah, it's all part of this complex spellform that I can sort of stop and tweak if I need to..."

She looked at me with new worry.

If I had eyes at that moment, I would've rolled them, "Oh come on Twilight, I still have the same goals and values. There's no reason for me to self-modify myself to be malicious, I mean, if given the chance, would you make yourself want to be a self-replicating monster, and turn yourself into some sort of grey goo scenario?"

"I guess not..."

"Right. It wouldn't make sense for me to do something that made me malicious, and I have no reason to purposefully change my own values to something more primitive. You don't have to worry."

Twilight nodded slowly, "I guess that's... comforting..." Her eyes narrowed a bit, looking me up and down, "Come to think of it... how are you talking to me right now? I didn't notice it was strange when you looked like a pony, but now it occurs to me that you don't really have the necessary organs..."

"Oh, it's simple: I'm just manifesting the sounds in a voice I remember being my own."

"Yeah, but... how are you making them audible? Are you like... conjuring an illusion, or...?"

"No illusion. I am simply making the sound exist... You understand how sound waves work, right?"

She nodded, smiling a little, "Yes, kinetic energy vibrates the air, creating a compressional wave, which travels outwards indefinitely."

"Right. I'm making noises by creating those compressional waves."

"Wow... Ok then... Just another world-changing power you have." she rolled her eyes a little.

"Right... Well... Would you mind looking at what you wanted to see now? When I don't have a form, I have to hold myself together against ambient energies. It makes me feel very... 'naked'..."

She blushed a little again, "Oh! Right... Let me just... get to it then!" She leaned in a little, looking through my spellform, "...I can barely even see the spellwork now... It's so... Small and intricate..."

"Yeah..." I admitted, "I think I'm hitting a bottleneck in my development: I've made most of the improvements and additions which are obvious, and I'm starting to hit some boundaries involving the laws of physics... This might be close to my limits."

Twilight nodded slowly, "Well, it's quite an impressive limit. I'm pretty sure we're well beyond the world record for 'most complex spellform'." She took a step away, "You can turn back now."

I reformed the pony body around myself, pulling my mass into the shape, becoming the smiling alicorn mare standing in front of Twilight again. I stretched my limbs a little with a sigh, "Ahh... much better..."

Twilight nodded again, "Right. Thanks for showing me that!" she gave me a smile. There was a moment of pause, and she glanced around the lab a bit, as if searching for something new to do with me, seemingly at a loss for a few moments. "Um... so..." she grasped for an idea, "Do you... wanna see my... book collection?" she grinned sheepishly.

My eyes widened slightly at the prospect of seeing the library of a magical scientist on an advanced alien world. I stared straight at her, and this time I had to temper my response to [i]not[/i] show too much emotion... The forceful, hiss-like response I gave was pretty much appropriate... "[b][i]Yes[/i][/b]."

[hr]

So one winding staircase and a couple hallways later, Twilight showed me her library. Now, when she'd said "book collection", I'd been thinking something like a few bookshelves of reference and light reading material. You know, a respectable private library. No. Twilight, from the looks of the labels on the few dozen shelving sections she had, was talking about an actual public library collection, complete from books for foals to learn to read with, to the great literary works of her planet, to records dating back over a thousand years, to textbooks on cutting edge science and magical theory. This was the kind of thing you'd see in the Universities of my homeworld before physical paper books became impractical for more efficient technologies...

I let my jaw drop as I stared at all the bookshelves, literally vibrating with excitement at the amount I could potentially learn from such a vast collection. I mean... She literally had whole sections dedicated to magical theory, and here I was, from a world where a single book on magic could [i]literally[/i] cost you an arm and a leg... Granted, it wasn't [i]my[/i] arm and leg I gave to the six headed butterfly spider thing, but that guy sure did miss 'em.

...uh... he had it coming. ...And he got better. Long story.

"Well, here it is! I just finished stocking these books." She glanced over at me. The sight of me panting, wide-eyed, legs spread slightly, wings sticking straight up caused her to immediately blush. She looked around uncomfortably, "Oh, um... Meta...? you should probably um... do something about... you know... The wings..."

I tore my eyes away from the books, "The... wings? Huh, would you look at that..." I lifted a hoof to poke at the stiffly extended left wing. "What about 'em?"

She blushed a little more, "I mean... Well... alicorns aren't exactly common in Equestria, and if somepony sees you, you might attract the wrong kind of attention..."

I nodded, glancing back at my wings. "Oh, ok. I'll just stop having them for a while." I focused on my form, temporarily removing the part with the wings, causing them lose all semblance of form and melt back into my body, leaving normal, flat fur where they'd been.

Twilight shuddered slightly at the sight, "I'm never gonna get used to you just doing that..."

"Sorry Twi," I shrugged, "I'll make a note to warm you next time I modify my form like that."

"Right..." she said, "So... I was thinking I could get some material to cross-reference with, and maybe you have some things you'd like to read?"

"Well, I don't actually know how to read your language, so tight now I'm doing what I did to understand your language in the first place." I said, concentrating on the bits and pieces of linguistic concept floating about.

"Oh... I don't suppose you could show me that?"

"It's not exactly clever stuff, Twi. I'm just sifting through the concepts about reading floating in the ether, trying to piece together a coherent understanding of it all..."

"I see... And how is it coming along...?"

"...It's gonna take a little while... It's a very tedious process..." I replied.

"Oh... well, um... Would you mind if I left you alone in here for a few minutes? I have some stuff I'd like to go take care of in the lab..."

"Twilight, this is the best room I could imagine on this planet. At this point, I don't really want to leave..."

She chuckled bashfully, "Oh, yeah... It is pretty great... isn't it..." She turned to start out the door, "Be back in a few minutes..."

"See you soon Twilight..." I responded with a detached wave of my forehoof. I kept concentrating on the various concepts I felt floating in the aether around the library, pulling them in and trying to build a working model of things. I reached out and pulled over a dictionary, and then an encyclopedia, to demonstrate to myself how the language worked. Pretty soon, the various titles and labels were all making sense, soon after, I found myself understanding the words of the encyclopedia telling me all about Prench Haute Couture, and within a few minutes, I felt like I could write a book in Equestrian.

Ok, even I impressed myself at this point: I'd gone from not knowing a language, to being able to read and write in it, in a matter of days, using a brute-force approach to just add the knowledge directly to my mind. That was a feat that I [i]know[/i] would have been far out of my reach if it wasn't for my odd predicament. And I wasn't even stopping there: now that I knew what everything in the library was, I could tell that there was no way one pony could get through all the books in a timely manner. Fortunately for me, I wasn't a pony, and the "one" thing was just a matter of skill at this point.

I turned my focus inward again, letting my body go mostly dormant on its hooves as I put my full attention on self-analyzing. I isolated the parts of my mindform which dealt with reading, comprehension, and and concept analysis. They were a bit of a jumble, but I stretched them out and began to arrange them. I worked to find new ways to streamline the processes, quickly improving them, systematizing them, bringing out the most efficient structure I could conceive at the time for learning from books.

Soon, I was able to extrapolate patterns from my work, and I began to create a copy from them, making a repeatable pattern. It was highly complex, but easily mirrored, and would do everything I needed it to: a spellform to raise, read, comprehend, and retain knowledge from books to be stored and analyzed later.

I tessellated the pattern, making 1 into 2, 2 into 4. 8... 16...

...32.

It had been a strain on my will and energy reserves at the end, but there were now 32 such shimmering spellforms floating about the library, lifting assigned books off the shelves, opening them, and slowly flipping through the pages to read them. I grinned, just resting for a moment as I admired the outcome of my work...

"Twilight? Is that you in here?" I'd been enjoying the feeling of the raw, unprocessed knowledge of the various texts being unloaded into my brain for a few minutes when a familiar voice came through the open door. I turned my head to see a little purple reptilian creature walking in, slowing as he saw me. "Oh... I heard the books and saw the magic and I thought you were Twilight..."

I shook my head, "Nope. Just a new friend of hers." I turned to face him, giving a friendly smile, "You're Spike, right? You can call me Meta." I held out a hoof for him.

He walked up and took my hoof, hesitant as he looked at my face with a bit of concern, "Uh... right..."

"Is uh... something wrong with my smile?" I asked

"Um... no! It's just... um... wide..."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I uh... don't have a lot of experience with socializing..." I took a moment to view myself from an external perspective and adjust it's wideness from "insane" to "friendly". "...Is this better?"

Spike chuckled awkwardly, "Um, yeah! Much better." he looked around, "So... What are you doing with the books?"

"Oh, Twilight said I could read any of her books, and I wanted to read them all, so I isolated the section of my consciousness that deals with learning from books, distilled it to a pattern, and tessellated it a few times so that that I could absorb the conceptual information of every book in the library through simple mechanical process of book learning, without having to physically interact with them."

Spike looked at me with a blank expression, his eyes having glazed over halfway through the explanation. "So... What's the end goal of this?"

I sighed, giving him a sympathetic smile, "I'm using thoughtforms to read the books for me, so I can learn their concepts without taking the time."

"Oh..." Spike looked around at all the spellforms floating about, eyes widening as what I was doing began to dawn on him, "Oh!" He put his hand to his jaw, "Does... Does Twilight know this spell?"

I shook my head, "Probably not. I mean, I just mae it up using raw conceptual thoughtforms..."

"Huh..." Spike said in that way people talk when they really don't have any response. "Oh! That's what that alien thing was made of! You must be the expert Princess Luna said she would bring to look at that thing Twilight's keeping in the basement, right?"

"Um... Well, I suppose I'd be considered an expert on the subject at this point, but I've never met Luna... as for the thing in the basement..." I wasn't sure how to field this one. Twilight had told me that Spike had been adamant about not letting me out, and she'd been breaking the promise to him that she wouldn't let me out a few hours ago, so while I didn't want to lie, I didn't want to tell him that I was the thing he was terrified of without Twilight there to calm him down.

...Which was why it was lucky that I heard Twilight's hoofsteps echoing around the corner again. "Alright Meta," she said as she rounded the corner, "Now that that's done, we can... um..." she trailed off as she saw me talking to Spike, surrounded by books floating in and out of her shelves. "Oh... Hi Spike! I... see you've met Meta!" she chuckled uncomfortably.

Spike smiled and nodded, "Yeah, Twilight, you've gotta see this spell she made to read the books: she says she made it up on the spot!"

Twilight looked around, "The books? Wait... Is this some sort of mass-analysis spell?"

"I isolated my mind's ability to read, comprehend, and store knowledge from books, created a hyper-simplified version, making it into a semi-symmetrical pattern, and tessellating it several times. So... now I can read your whole library in a few hours AND hang out with my friends!" I grinned.

Twilight's eyes practically sparkled, "That's amazing!" she rushed over to me, getting in my face in her excitement, "You [i]have[/i] to teach me!"

I leaned my head back so she didn't bump her nose against mine, "Um... Yeah... But later: we've got something else to deal with right now..." I pointed a hoof at Spike, cringing slightly.

Twilight looked over, blinking at Spike, "Oh, um... Spike! I see you've met... Meta."

Spike nodded, "Yeah! Is she gonna help you study that alien blob thing?"

Twilight cringed, fidgeting, "Um... Not exactly... She's um..."

"Spike." I said calmly, before Twilight could start digging a deeper hole, "You know how, when the entity in the chamber started to act strange, you made Twilight promise not to let it out? Because it seemed like some sort of monster?"

"Yeah... Did we figure something else out?"

"Well, I think we owe you an apology. See... While you were gone, it started talking to Twilight and that changed the nature of the situation. Spike... I'm a spellcaster from another world, and after I took a solid form and was able to understand what was going on, I asked Twilight to let me out. I'm sorry that I made her break her promise to you, but I was sort of scared of being trapped..."

Spike's eyes widened, looking over me with increasing amounts of agitation as he realized what I was saying, "Wait... [i]You're[/i] that thing from the basement!? I was just in there 2 days ago and it was just a pony-shaped blob!"

"Yes." I nodded, "I have regained many of my senses in the past few days. I hope to be back to my old self soon... And," I added, trying to give a reassuring smile, "I hope that we can be... um... friends?"

Spike blinked for a moment, moving a bit closer to Twilight, leaning into her a bit, "Uh... Twilight? Can I talk to you about something in the next room?" he eyed me shiftily, "...Alone."

Twilight gave me an awkward wince as she turned and walked out, Spike casting glances back at me as they walked through the doors...

I just sort of took the moment to check in on my spells... make some improvements...

A little ways down the hall, Twilight spoke in a hushed, apologetic tone, "Spike... You're mad at me, I know..."

"You just let that thing out? [i]Alone[/i]?" He hissed, "What the hell Twilight? Containment procedures! We had clearly agreed on containment procedures!"

"She was talking to me, there didn't seem to be any evidence that she was actually dangerous, I couldn't just keep her locked away indefinitely..."

"That's not your decision to make! Twilight, we have no idea what her goals are or what she's capable of! You could've endangered all of Equestria just now!"

"Oh come on Spike, what so far has happened that makes you think she's willing or able to do something to hurt us?"

"She literally just told us she self-modified to read all the books in your library. What if she decides she wants to read everything in Equestria?"

"Oh come on, is that such a bad thing? I mean, it's not like reading a book destroys it..."

"Says a pony who's never collected mint-condition comic books... But no, Twilight, think about it, defense plans are written down, ancient spells are written down. If Meta's part of some invasion, she could just be gathering information for an attack! That's not even considering what she might do to get information when she runs out of books!"

Twilight rolled her eyes, "Spike, you keep operating from these assumptions that Meta chose to come here and be this way. There's no evidence that she's malicious or even that she's lying."

"There's no evidence that she's [i]not[/i], Twilight: absence of evidence is [i]not[/i] evidence of absence! You even told me that a self-modifying entity like that could do all sorts of things to potentially kill or enslave the entire planet!"

"When we talk about that, the risk is often poorly explained. A self modifying artificial intelligence could have any number of goals, most of which aren't so much malicious as different from what organic beings would want. An AI is more likely to become obsessed with the number Four than it is to decide that all life on the planet must be eradicated."

"How can you prove that? Didn't you tell me that nothing like this has ever existed?"

"Well... No... But that doesn't mean we can't model this sort of thing. I mean, we're predictable as organic life forms because we've evolved over the millennia to act in accordance with satisfying our biological needs in our environment. A self-modifying entity doesn't have those constraints, but it still operates based on an existing set of constraints: it has the values it starts with, the needs and wants it has, and the environment it has to adapt to to satisfy these. From that, we can extrapolate the constraints in which it will purposefully self-modify itself, and the actions it will then take. Following so far?"

"I guess... But I'm not sure what we can assume about Meta..."

"Well, first off, she has a strong self-preservation instinct. That's pretty clear from the fact that she even survived this far, and is usually something you can assume about any entity that isn't being reckless. Now, with something as powerful as Meta, I'm not sure how much self-preservation is a reason not to provoke us, but I still think she'd see us as a potential threat if she did become malicious."

"Right, but that's all the more reason for her to deceive us about her intentions if they are something which would cause us to fight her."

"Right, but that brings me to my next point: putting aside the fact that Meta seems to hold Friendship, or must at least some form of social cooperation as a value, because she seeks socialization with other intelligent beings, what reason would such an entity have to be outright malicious? I mean, her values and thought processes are definitely alien, but there are an infinite number of goals she could have, and a finite number of them directly involve killing. For all we know, she could want to become the greatest wildlife painter in the world, and that's why she wants to be let outside."

"But Twilight, just because a goal doesn't directly involve killing ponies doesn't mean killing ponies won't come up: we have no reason to believe she would have any reservations about killing in order to achieve her goals, because she'd have no reason to put those in. If she decided to paint every house in Equestria red, for example, she cold decide that blood is a good source of pigment and start killing for that reason alone."

"That's a good point, but as of yet, the only interests we've seen from her are Socialization, Self-Improvement, and Gathering Information."

"Right, gathering information like what our insides look like on a dissection table."

"I'm aware. Any goal can go to dark places, but that's true even for ponies: some of the most intricate knowledge we have on pony anatomy was gathered by mad scientists and dark wizards doing highly unethical experiments. Meta has no reason to use those sorts of methods other than perhaps convenience, and her interests in Socialization and Self Preservation would make them problematic. Even then, you have to remember that she's clearly a living, thinking being. We don't lock up powerful wizards like Sunset Shimmer simply because of their ability to hurt ponies, and the fact that she's not a life-form we've encountered before doesn't mean we should treat her differently."

Spike sighed, "I know, I know... Tolerance and all that, but seriously Twilight, are you at least aware of the risk you're taking here?"

"Of course," Twilight stated, "just because I'm willing to show her Friendship, doesn't mean I've lost sight of the fact that I barely know her, and that she's capable of things I can't even predict. It just means I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt: until she starts showing interest in defection, I'm going to continue cooperating. That's just how game-theory works when two strangers are in a scenario like this..."

"Right, but..." he paused, struggling a little, "It's like... I just feel like you're really missing something here, like there's some flaw in your reasoning as to how all this justifies trusting something like her..."

"Well, if you think you know anything I'm overlooking, you're welcome to tell me."

"Well..." Spike struggled, "I dunno... She's scary?" He sighed, "I don't know how to argue this... It's like you have more words than me, and I just don't know enough to really argue this..."

"So... You're admitting I have a better point... but not conceding?"

"It's not that I think you have a better point, it's that you're just so much better at arguing stuff like this. But just because you can make a claim well doesn't mean that claim is sound."

"But Spike, is there anything I've said that you think is incorrect?"

"Well, not of the top of my head, no. But... just because you're correct doesn't mean you're right!"

Twilight stopped to think about this, "Well... Yeah... I guess that's true..."

"Look... At this point, I think all we can do is agree to disagree. All I'm asking is that you don't forget what she is and what she's capable of, and I'll try to be nicer to her. Deal?"

"Well..." Twilight thought, "In the absence of any better conclusion to the matter, I suppose that's fair enough."

"Right... Now, I think we should contact Princess Celestia to tell her what's been happening. I mean, I'm pretty sure she'd like to know about this, and I'd kind of like to know myself..." he straightened a piece of parchment and readied to write.

"Alright... Let me think about this... Started talking, had a conversation, went to bed, had another conversation, let her out, potentially dangerous... Ok, I think I know what I want to say." She cleared her throat.

[quote]Dear Princess Celestia,

I apologise for not informing you of this sooner, but there has been a major development in the study of the extraEquestrial spellform which I discovered several days ago. At approximately Nine AM yesterday, the entity took a form that looked like mine, and began speaking to me, claiming to be a female from another world who studied magic and lost her body in some sort of Magical attack. She did not have access to most of her memories or personality at this point, and told me she would be unable to provide answers to my questions until the next day.

Over the night, she created a body with a unique look, and this morning, she asked to be referred to as "Meta". She then asked me to release her, claiming she wanted to learn about our world, as this may help her regain more of her memories. After a thorough discussion of whether she was dangerous enough to be contained without evidence of malice, at approximately Ten AM today, I released the entity from containment. I am aware that this action was a breach of safety protocols, and take full responsibility for it, however, I believe Meta is a friendly, sapient being, and that allowing her to be free was the only ethical course of action.

Spike does not believe that Meta is safe, citing her ability to self modify with seemingly no limit, her clearly alien values and viewpoint, and her willingness to do so, especially when gathering knowledge. I on the other hoof, believe I have befriended Meta, and plan to continue learning about her.

We will send more detailed notes in the next few hours. Until then, take any action you deem appropriate. As of yet, however, I believe the situation is handled and we can proceed as normal.

Your fellow Princess and Friend, Twilight Sparkle.[/quote]

"Anything else?" Spike asked

"No... I compiled the notes that I wanted to send her while you were taking to Meta. They're sitting in the usual spot in the lab. I guess you can send them when you get a moment..."

"Uh huh..." Spike said, rolling up the letter, tying it off, and sending it in a rush of magical flames. "Alright... there it goes."

"Thank you Spike. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?"

Spike sighed, "No. Let's just get back to see what Meta's been up to while we were gone. Hopefully she didn't turn the furniture into an army of robots..."

Twilight chuckled weakly, and they both walked back down the hall.

I was still messing with my spells when they got back. I found that the information was coming out in raw form, and that I'd need to process it later, perhaps while sleeping, before it worked as actual knowledge. As they came through the doors, I finished up what I was tweaking and turned to face them, "Welcome back. Still just reading the books..."

"Hello again Meta." Twilight smiled, "Sorry to keep you waiting, we were just talking about... Um..."

"Me." I stated.

Spike stopped in his tracks.

"Uhh..." Twilight's smile faltered.

"You were talking about how Spike doesn't trust me because I am clearly capable of being a threat, and he has not seen enough evidence to overcome his fear of me, while Twilight does not feel this way because she has seen no evidence."

Spike unconsciously took a step away from me, eyes widening.

"Meta..." Twilight said, also a bit unnerved, "Were you spying on us?"

"Not entirely by intent." I spoke a bit slowly, "I have a far stronger awareness of my surroundings than a typical organic being and I haven't gained full control over what I tune out. On top of that, all verbal communication carries concepts, which I'm learning to interpret, so I didn't even need to parse the words to understand the intent. I heard you through the door, and once I realized it was a matter which concerned my wellbeing I gave it some attention."

Spike looked at Twilight, even more perturbed now, "So... You're telling us that there's no way for us to hide information from you..."

I gave him a sympathetic look, "I guess I'm telling you that, if you want to keep things private from me, you're going to have to be more careful about them." I thought for a second, raising my forehooves disarmingly, "That's not a threat or anything, I'm just trying to be honest with you about what I'm capable of. If I lied, then you wouldn't have any ability to trust me."

Spike relaxed a bit, still grimacing a little, "I guess that adds up, but even still, you're an alien with unknowable goals and powers beyond our comprehension. Surely you understand how reckless we would be if we didn't assume that you were being deceptive..."

"If I wanted to deceive you, I would have lied about overhearing you. If I was interested in subverting your will, I would have fled or attacked by now. Friendship is not built on deception, but on cooperation. Someone who attempts to subvert your will is not trustworthy as a friend, because they aren't supportive of your goals."

"Is that how you see Friendship? A means to an end?" Spike asked, more inquiring than accusing.

"Would you want to be friends with someone who was comfortable with hurting or betraying you? Friendship requires mutual support in order to be worth something. A friendship where one side clearly takes from the other without giving is not a good friendship. That is a simple fact of social interaction. Right now, I am giving you the honesty you need to give me the trust I need."

"Riight... Well, thanks for that, I guess..." he glanced over at Twilight, "I'm gonna go send some reports now, if it's all the same to you..."

Twilight sighed, "Right... Fine... Go do that..."

"I'll see you later Twilight. Meta..." He kept glancing back at us as he left the room...

Twilight sighed, "Sorry about Spike," she said, "He's really protective of me, and I've been getting him to read a lot of hard sci-fi lately. I guess the stories about rogue artificial intelligences, alien invaders, and killer robots have all gotten to him more than the exploration..."

"It's understandable," I said, "I'm sure I'd be a bit more cautious if I were in your position. If Friendship wasn't such a terminal value for you, you may not have even let me out. A friend who's willing to second guess you like that makes a far better advisor than one who agrees with you. His relatively strong sense of caution is part of what made me so eager to get you to let me out before he came back... Sorry that I was a bit manipulative, by the way. You kind of had me trapped in a vulnerable situation..."

Twilight nodded, slowly, "I guess I understand... You're very threat oriented, I've noticed. Like a pony who's used to being in danger."

I nodded, "Humans are a dangerous species. Humans who study magic live on the edge of society, under constant threat from other magic users and supernatural beings... Besides, if I'd been more defensive, I wouldn't be in this situation now..."

"Right," Twilight nodded with a bit more force, "I suppose you've been put in a very precarious situation..."

I nodded slowly, adding after a few moments, "Hey, look on the bright side: if I hadn't been sent here, I'd have never met you!" I gave her a smile.

"Aww..." Twilight smiled, blushing slightly.

I responded with a sideways hug, letting go after a moment, "So, you think it would help if I go talk to Spike?"

Twilight shook her head, "Give him some time. He's probably still a bit on edge after everything that's happened..."

I nodded. I didn't entirely remember how people worked, but I'd realized that Twilight was a bit more analytical than usual. I probably couldn't just use a wall of logic on Spike, so I'd have to just let things work out naturally... "Well, if we're giving Spike his space... Do you want to go outside?"

Twilight sighed, "I suppose I've already let you out of the box, so what's the harm of letting you out of the castle? Come on, the door's this way..." she gestured with her head and started walking out of the library and down the hall.

I grinned, following her out, speeding up a moment to keep pace beside her. "I can't wait to see more of your world, Twilight. Oh, maybe there's somepony you want me to meet?"

"Yeah... about that... We shouldn't tell my friends what you are."

"What am I?"

"Um... That's... a good point... I guess I mean that you're from another world and all that... Do you... want to make up a backstory? Like, you're my cousin from out of town or something?"

I shook my head firmly, "Deception is not a sustainable method of making friends, or even existing in society. If they ask, I would prefer to tell them the truth. ...What we know of it at least."

Twilight grit her teeth for a second, "Alright... Well... I can't guarantee they won't react with pitchforks, but you never know..." Her horn lit up, and one of the massive doors swung inward a bit.

A breeze pushed through the open door as we approached, and I felt Equestria's open air for the first time. Excited at the notion of finally getting to explore the world I'd found myself in, I trotted next to Twilight, out into the town of Ponyville...


End file.
